#not because he actually lost it but because the government had to come confiscate it

[smtown-tourist]

Taemin is the type of chaotic energy where he gets bored and just starts pressing random numbers on his phone and dialing it to see what comes up

[ere-the-sun-rises]

To anyone who reads "personal experiences" like this and is genuinely considering their point of view, they're not real. I can tell you exactly what each of these examples above are actually talking about.

Mafia-esque unions - this comes from the dubious association Jimmy Hoffa Sr, the then-president of the Teamsters Union in the 60s, had with northeastern mafias in the US. Allegedly, pension funds were loaned to mafia interests for high-yield interest rates and protection from corporate knee-breakers.

(Pensions are often invested in order to generate growing funds to accomodate continual retirements. Most often these are low-risk so money is only gained instead of lost, but not always.)

Hoffa's alleged mafia associations led to the American government threatening to dismantle the Teamsters - then, as now, the largest union in the US. The Teamsters made a concerted effort to avoid even the appearance of impropriety afterward in order to survive.

Bear in mind that even if Hoffa's mafia ties were real, he was only one man. The American government was threatening to disperse the entire union and confiscate its funds. This is what they meant above when they're referring to unions getting reeled in by a mafia crackdown.

If a majority of an employee body vote to join, the entire body joins the union. It is not optional on a person-by-person basis and dues are paid by everybody, including those who didn't want to join. Membership is non-optional for new hires to existing union yards. It's designed this way because otherwise, the union has no way to gain traction and enforce it's collective bargaining power against the employer. Union dues are on par with or less than income taxes and come off your paycheck without you handling it, so it makes little difference.

Union threats of violence are notorious, but less so are the corporate thugs sent in to physically break up strikes. Striking members as late as the 70s were subject to violence bankrolled by their employers to intimidate them back to work. In response, union leadership and membership took to pre-emptive aggression with those wanting to cross picket lines or getting too close to them.

Teaching unions during COVID - this was the unions stepping in to stop schoolboards from subjecting teachers to unsafe workplaces. Children were not able to get vaccinated for quite some time, and unions backed teachers who were unwilling to teach in-person during the pandemic.

Art delivery - on sites where unionized and non-unionized workers mix, unionized work cannot be overridden. This means that the unloading crew were unionized workers and it would be illegal for non-union workers, including the truck driver, to unload instead of them as that work is specifically designated to them.

As for union workers being less careful, union workers on average provide better products/services than non-union counterparts because they are not overworked or understaffed. They are also just less likely to take bullshit laying down because their livelihood isn't on the line.

How would a union provide permanent protection to its membership without being permanent?

Profiteering - yeah, you have to pay dues. You don't work for free - why should your rep have to?

Also, as a reference point - the Teamsters Union is the biggest in thr US and it's current president makes roughly $450,000. Unlike CEOs or corporate positions, there are no additional kickbacks or bonuses.

Unions, unlike corporations, do not have shares to profit from or ownership of assets to sell. Unions are not profit-driven entities.

Political involvement - unions lobby political parties in order to pass labour-friendly laws. This includes things that affect non-union labour too, like mandatory sick leave, maternity leave or health coverage. If unions don't lobby lawmakers for worker-friendly legislation, who will?

So, in short, none of these were legitimate "personal experiences", but rather half-misremembered anti-union propaganda that doesn't even have the decency to know what the fuck they're talking about. I won't say unions are perfect, because expecting any organization to be is setting yourself up for failure, but they are the only bodies whose sole function is the protection of the working.

Also, fun fact: one of the first things the fascist governments of Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Francisco Franco's Spain did was abolish and outlaw unions. Gee, I wonder what fascist authoritarians and their rich backers dislike about collective labour action.

has to be my favorite comment on my pro-Union post

[fckwritersblock]

Protection Forever - William Lennox

Lennox x Reader

Description: Running into an old flame at the worst possible time.

Warning: nah. Bad writing? Kinda. Unedited because I was excited. I’ll not when it’s been fixed. Somethings may not be fully aligned with the movie but I tried 😩

Word count: 2500+

Dedicated to @merakiaes hey fren!

All gifs from @meragifs too!

You were an EMT.

The two of you pulled up to meet with the other Autobots, you exiting the vehicle before he transformed. You were in awe as he and the rest of the cars all changed.

The biggest one, their leader, gave a rundown of everything that was happening once he confirmed Sam’s identity. This was just a recap for you as Ratchet had already explained. The teenage boy just stood there stuttering not really knowing how to process everything and you frowned again. That was when you really took notice of two teens just standing there. Having known what was expected of Sam Witwicky you frowned slightly.

“I don’t know about this Ratchet, he’s just kid.” You commented to the alien you had formed a quick bond with.

“And who might you be?” The one called Optimus inquired.

You gave him your name before the other yellow autobot, who you’d later learned was Bumble Bee, uttered something through his radio. It was hard for you to hear but the other robots seemed to be use to it as Ratchet responded immediately.

“The human. I like her.” Ratchet sounding irritated.

Bumblebee made another comment and right before Ratchet could respond one of the others chimed in.

“Wait why do they get humans?” Jazz asked incredulously. “I want one too!”

“Enough! Humans are not pets.” The one call Optimus Prime stated sternly, clearly tired of their bickering. You held your laugh, highly amused.

They were like siblings. A family.

“Exactly I’m just here to help and be a better tour guide than these kids can be.” You confirmed practically forcing your services on them. “Besides they need adult supervision. From the looks of it, you all do.” You grinned at everyone around you. Optimus gave a nod, agreeing.

“She stays. Let’s move.”

In that short amount of time things moved rather quickly. You watched the Autobots accidentally destroy Sam’s backyard when attempting to retrieve the glasses, you were all arrested, you escaped thanks to the Autobots, only to be arrested again.

Fail.

Finally you ended it some secret base. How get you weren’t alone. The government had apparently been on a roll with kidnapping civilians who “knew too much “.

Things weren’t going great but quickly went left when the Decepticons, the Autobot rivals, came to retrieve Megatron.

A war from another planet had officially made Earth its battleground.

You were nervous, trying to figure out how to calm everything down before things started to escalate. Nobody was going to get anywhere with all the bickering. That’s when you saw him.

It had been what? Two years?

Still, without even knowing it, without even knowing you were present, he was still able to make your heart be slow and fast at the same time. The army had aged him, but for the better making him all the more attractive but you couldn’t focus on that right now. Especially when you heard:

“The cryogenic system is failing! We're losing NBE One!”

All the soldiers begin to pack everything that they could to prepare in a fight the way they always did. It was an mirable the way Linux game orders in his men took them without a second thought. The trust there.

“That’s good. Get all the ammo you got.”

“Everything you can carry. Bring it.”

Tearing your eyes away from your former lover you grab Sam.

“Come on, we need Bee.” You reminded him, nodding in Simmons direction

“You got to take me to my car.” Sam said, then repeated when he was ignored. “You have to take me to my car. He’s gonna know what to do with the Cube.”

“Your car? It's confiscated.”

“Then unconfiscate it.” You stared blankly.

“We do not know what will happen if we let it near this thing! -“

“You don't know.”

“Maybe you know, but I don't know.”

You rolled your eyes at the insufferable mans rambling.

This was really was more about ego who was in control more than anything. The guy running the ship, clearly was on a power trip. Unfortunately for him he was facing off against soldiers . The Captain who’s eyes you could feel staring at the side of your face.

A Captain and his soldiers. Ones that really dont like to lose and take serving their country seriously.

The guy who arrested you earlier continue to argue with Sam about getting him back to bumblebee when Lennox finally pulled out his gun sick of the back-and-forth.

“Take him to his car!”

As soon as he did so all hell broke loose and everyone from both parties pulled out a weapon.

“Drop it!”

It wasn’t until One of the sector seven agents pointed a gun at the back of Will’s head that you disable to another agent and took his gun and pointed it directly and held it directly at the one pointing the gun at your ex.

“I really wouldn’t.” You warned.

You were no soldier, but Will have taught you plenty before you broke up. So did your brother, before he passed away. He actually served alongside Will but died in combat. Biking. That’s part of why you were so hurt when Will re-enlisted. When he got promoted to Captain and chose the army over you. You were terrified of losing him the way you lost your brother. The break up wasn’t that messy but you both said things you didn’t mean. In attempts to mask your own pain and hurt one another.

You know. Hurt people, hurt people.

It’s still came to no surprise that you put a bullet in someone to protect him. Together or not you’d never let anything happen to him.

“I'm ordering you under S-Seven executive jurisdiction-“ Simmons ranted.

“S-Seven don't exist.” You interjected, earning a quick appreciative glance from Will.

“Right. And we don’t take orders from people that don’t exist.”

“I’m gonna count to 5. Okay-“ Simmons attempted to threat yet again.

“Well, I’m gonna count to three.” Will deadpanned.

You knew that look. God did you know that look and it was so wrong that you were so turned on.

Finally the Secretary of defense interfered telling Simmons to do what was being asked of him. Everyone relaxed slight, weapons lowering.

“Y/n,”

“Captain.”

The Captain and couldn’t help but watch you how do you get up and prepare to go.

“So that’s her huh?” Epps commented as Will watched you run off with Sam.

“Yeah..” Will answered, mind racing.

While he knew he’d eventually see you again, he didn’t think it would be like this. You looked breath taking.

“Damn. Shorty had your back that entire time.”

“Gear up,”

“What I’m just saying I thought she was gonna put a cap in his.” Epps shouted after his Captain receiving no response.

Will knew you had his back, you always would, the same way he would always have yours. He thought of you often, the break up between two inescapable, never feeling like he did the right thing. You were always not too far from the front of his mind. Him wondering how you were doing. If you were happy. If you found somebody else. There was no doubt he regretted what had transpired between the two of you. It was his fault. He knew that. You knew that. He had ample opportunity to fight for you and he didn’t. When he was promoted Captain he felt he had to choose between you and the army. He didn’t choose you the way he should’ve. In reality he could’ve had both. However hr so caught up proven himself to his deadbeat dad that he possibly let the best thing that ever happened to him go.

Not to mention trying to atone for your brothers death. It wasn’t his fault, but he still couldn’t shake it. So without talking to you he reenlisted. Needless to say where that got him.

Now hear the both of you were in the middle of an alien war. Yeah. This is the last place he thought he’d see you.

You were numb. The battle on the highway enough to freak you out. For mommy, just a moment you thought this might be a dream but no. This is all very real. One minute you guys were just entering the city trying to lay low, next thing you know - BOOM! The explosion knocked all of you over, injuring some, killing a few. Bumblebee’s legs were partially blown off.

Getting up off the pavement you waited for the ringing in your ear to subside as you stood up, trying to study yourself when you felt a pair of arms hold you still.

You knew it was Will just by the way he touched you, you blinked hard trying not to go down memory lane.

“Are you okay?” The concern in his voice was enough to make your heart skip a bear.

“Yeah,” you nodded slowly. “Yeah I’m fine.”

Slowly you removed yourself from his grip and went to check on Sam and Mikaela. Ratchet on the other hand -

“Hmm. His pheromone levels are-“ you quickly turned on him and glared.

“Ratchet I’ll turn you into a can opener if you don’t shut the hell up.”

The robot nearly held his hands up in the surrendering position as he followed you. Will had arranged an aircraft to pick up Sam and the cube while everyone else defended themselves against the deceptive cons in a hurry to get the cube far far away before Megatron arrived. Sam was in a panic and so Michaela, you could see Will’s short fuse getting ready to exploded. It was then you decided to be an escort.

“Sam, you can’t do this alone.” Michaela fussed.

“He won’t be alone.” You commented, causing all parties involved to look at you.

“I’m going with you.” You declared.

“No.” Will didn’t even hesitated as he stepped closer to you.

“Captain Lennox-“

“No!” You grabbed him by the front of his beer and pushed him back.

“Do you see what going on out there?!” You continued to hold on to him and you yelled at him over there chose. “We’re at a war. One we are extremely ill prepared for. So get your shit together! Sam is my responsibility. I have to get this kid to safety.”

This time your hands slid up the side of his face forcing him to look at you.

“Y/n..” he breathed out leaning down toward you, and for the first time during all this madness you could visibly see he was afraid.

“I’ll be back, Will.” You assured him, briefly resting your forehead against his.

Gathering himself he pulled away, looking toward Sam then back at you.

“Go. Go!”

And then we were running.. With nothing but an M16 strapped to your back and the pistol in your hand, you ran faster than you ever have before.

The four of you were under attack once more, you and Sam doing what you had to, to avoid getting snatched up as a fight Ironhide and Ratchet defended you. Unfortunately you were too close to one of the cars that went up in flames and you were thrown into another car from the blast.

“Y/n!” You could feel the blood on your forehead as you slowly pushed yourself up. As you tried to stand you immediately stopped feeling the pain in your thigh. Looking down could see the damage that had been done. The blood surrounding the afflicted area.

“Wha- what, what do i do?!” Sam asked frantically once he took notice of your injury.

“You gotta keep going Sam. I’ll be fine.”

He stood fo his feet, unsure of what to do. When Ironhide told him the same thing.

“Go!” You screamed once more.

Sam left and continued to run without you as you, as quickly as possible, as you tore your focus away from him to pull the shard of glass in your leg out. Ripping a piece of your shirt off you tightly tied it around your thigh in order to stop the bleeding. There was no point in going forward now but the return back to everyone else and help them fight.

You just had to avoid getting killed in the process.

You seen a car steering wheel, a Mountain Dew vending machine and and Xbox all turn into one of those freaky ass robots right before your eyes. All of which you helped others fight off. It was so surreal. In fact, if it wasn’t for the constant ringing in your ear from all the explosions you definitely think you were dreaming. You almost made it back to Lennox and his men when another Decepticon stood between between you and your destinations. They were definitely taking a beating. You saw Epps shooting a green laser indicating the robot that doubled as a helicopter wasn’t a friendly and decided to do what you could to keep the Decepticon from getting any closer to them and hurting any more civilians. In an attempt to draw it away from everyone else, you begin to fire your weapon giving it everything you had.

Unfortunately, the side effective taking its attention off the others meant putting the attention on you.

You ran trying to duck and dodge a bullets now directed your way.

But Will. Will’s heart dropped. Seeing you there defending yourself alone. His pause was brief, the air forces plan already in motion, before he started the motorcycle and was speeding in your direction.

“William!” You screamed for him fearfully as he drove straight toward the robot.

The only thing you could hear was your heartbeat pounding in your ears. You almost couldn’t breathe, you don’t remember the last time you ever felt so scared in your life. But it wasn’t your life you feared for was it?

He rushed forward and slid under the robot continuing to firing the launcher. All you could do was watch as he drove toward you. Toward the danger your mind wondering if he did that on a regular basis. Was this the life of a soldier? What he went through day after day when he was deployed?

Standing up he only spared the parts of the dismembered robot a glance before shouting and turning looking for you. In a matter of seconds he was standing directly in front of you and pulling you into his arms.

Relief.

There was nothing like physically being about to touch someone, hold someone to really know they were okay.

“So…” you began, suddenly feeling nervous. “...That was hot-“

Before you were able to get another word in, he captured your lips with his kissing you roughly and bringing you closer, hands on the small of your back. You couldn’t help it kiss him back just as fiercely put in every emotion you had into that kiss.

Every ounce of passion he had in body, put into this kiss, your lips just as soft, kiss just as pure as he remembered. When you kissed, he knew he was a goner and could never let you go again.

It has been two years since the last time you guys have been this close. This intimate. Reconnected. The feeling it gave you, the indescribable feeling, was one neither one of you ever wanted to forgo again. Pulling back slowly, you both had smiles on your faces, Will pulling you closer to plant a kiss on your forehead.

“Excuse me,” Epps interrupted.

The both of you turning your attention on him.

“As cute as this shit is it’s highly inappropriate in the middle of the battle. I’m just saying we are trying to stay alive and shit.”

———————————————

Oh my fu- I don’t even know what this isssss

Couldn’t tell you what my original ideas was or nothing. I believed this was going to short-

I enjoyed writing it though! Shoutout again to @merakiaes for being on this lennox train with me lol

I’m just....I’m just gonna leave this mess here.

Bye

- Mo

—————————-

Tags: @merakiaes @lilythemadqueen

[zee-writes-and-draws]

Normal world AU where the different buildings are just random groups of people and all of them ended up moving to the small village near the supposedly ‘haunted’ mountain that Samon and Enki grew up on bc property values are low as shit, and all of the minors are adopted by the guards. Qi has basically just grabbed Upa and Liang and ran the hell away from the Chinese mafia. Samon sees this random man dragging two half-dead children with him and this is now the very first time any of the new residents of the village find out the ‘hauntings’ that lowered property values were just a teenage Enki post massive growth spurt and a very small and over-energetic Samon that haven’t been seen in well over a decade.

- Hajime has, unfortunately, agreed to look after Jyugo and Nico while Rock and Uno try to find legal jobs, but it’s a lot on him. He and Seitarou help Uno and Rock fight a case to get custody of the two minors. Yamato is helping Tsukumo get a restraining order against his former agent and various paparazzi, as well as going to therapy so he doesn’t constantly feel the need to put on a persona in front of others. Hajime is a teacher at the local school (since there’s a decent number of local kids and then the building children), Yamato is the school’s coach, and Seitarou sells uniforms/cute festival stuff but is also occasionally seen working with the age 7 and below kids because they’re all very small and nice.

- Kiji is trying to cure Honey of his anger management issues and Trois of his pyromaniac tendencies. His day job is making and testing makeup that everyone buys, like mascara and eyeliner and hair gel. His second in command is working in one of the other small shops, selling everyone clothes (he and Seitarou make the clothing together).

- Kenshirou is only here because some of his dogs are sick and this village has been weirdly good for their health. Along the way he lets Musashi and Hitoshi stay with him because they help on chores and the dogs love both of them very much. He helps with the local stray problem by opening a shelter and rehabilitating most of them (the few who can’t be fixed to near-perfect health are still loved and cared for). Hitoshi bakes lots of food and sells it at Shiro’s restaurant, which is also why his presence is appreciated. Musashi tutors online part-time after Mitsuru rigged up wifi for them. Between all three of their jobs they can afford a place that’s small but has four tiny rooms so each person can a private space. (They sleep in the living room that’s been transformed into the group bedroom).

- Mitsuru is considered the local nuisance in so many ways, but after all of his loudspeakers and amplifiers have been confiscated he’s forced to resort back to regular hand-made instruments, so he at least gets to learn something entertaining as he irritates everyone with his noise-making. He and Momoko live in the same house but there’s a line drawn on the inside and outside that splits the house in half so everyone realizes in all of ten seconds they’re not actually together together, just saving on rent as long-term friends. Momoko works on managing the more official stuff to keep the town from being erased. She’s the unofficial (until the next election of course) mayor of the town at this point. Mitsuru’s day job is rigging up stuff like wifi and helping Hajime with his shop class at the high school.

- Shiro moved here after hearing how wonderful the cuisine is. He approves of being able to gather fresh ingredients on the mountain. Rock is frequently seen at his restaurant, both as a customer and as a worker. Hitoshi was recruited within a week. (Hajime has some mixed feelings but Rock mostly stops acting like an idiot after the first day, so it works out well)

- Inori and Ruka moved here years ago (and dragged the Daisen brothers with them) and are pretty much the only residents who were here before everyone started moving out and the buildings moved in. They’re the only ones initially who know the story behind the hauntings and never shared it out of indifference. Inori works in construction of new buildings/clearing rubble from the old, the Daisen trio help train the different sports teams at the school, and Ruka technically co-owns the makeup business with Kiji but his preferred job is as an unofficial swimming instructor because the two of them don’t get along.

- Samon and Enki bring the village supplies and materials from the mountain and trade this way. Samon has a notable weakness for ice pops, popsicles, and zakuro shaved ice, which he gets to surprise Enki on days it seems like he might want it. The new residents are all pleasantly surprised by how sweet Noriko is. Shiro offers her a job after trying some of her desserts. She bakes on weekends and holidays only to avoid overexerting herself, but the rest of the time her jobs include checking people in, taking orders to Shiro and Rock, and keeping peace if someone starts arguments. Houzuki is the area acupuncture specialist and medic until the Otogi family moves in, but he switches to full time acupuncture and massage therapy after they take up the practice. (they’re better than him at medicine anyways and he’s ok with admitting it).

- Liang and Upa love training on the mountain. Rock joins them frequently, often chatting with Liang as they race up. Qi is marginally less interested in physical activity, but he’s willing to make the hike up with them because of the amazing plant both during the hike and at the arrival itself. In the long run, doing some exercise in this form helps him with his mental health a lot and makes him happier. Tsukumo joins occasionally and talking to Qi helps him gradually come out of his shell.

- Trois takes to the challenge of trying to be constructive in building things instead of weapons and explosives. The downside is he frequently teams up with Mitsuru (who has the most equipment necessary) and therefore there are unique ways of getting around the idea of non-destructive inventions. Honey figures out ways to get Mitsuru his speakers back on the condition that he can use the wiring for his capsules.

- Nico ends up really sad about the lack of wifi so he tries to work with Mitsuru to improve tech, but he’s got a hard time reading the manuals so now Musashi, accompanied by either Uno or Trois depending on the day, can be seen teaching Nico how to read instruction manuals.

- Yamato is still very proud of his Japanese heritage, but he also frequently encourages others to appreciate the culture they live in and the culture they came from. Thanks to him, there’s a small festival hosted each year where everyone brings something like food or games or clothing from their culture and share it with everyone.

- Kiji takes it as a personal challenge to help teach normal world culture to at least one of the Gokuu brothers. Enki is far less willing to go along with the idea that he needs help from someone, so it’s Samon. Inori, who had a similar idea for the last eleven years, is currently trying to teach Samon how to drive. It’s yielding mixed results, but he takes really well to motorbikes. Hajme and Samon have a brief ceasefire whenever the subject of motorcycles comes up.

- No one is allowed to bring up the time that Hajime got lost in the mountain. No  one.

- Kuu comes and goes as he pleases. Mostly he stays at Hajime’s house but sometimes he’ll somehow appear wherever Samon Enki and Noriko are presently staying and lies down in the lap of whoever is trying to meditate. Enki tries to ignore Kuu (and fails), Samon will give him small scritches and complain about Hajime in a quiet tone, and Noriko feeds and pets him.

- In their spare time, many of the adults critique the prison systems they rescued the others from. Kiji, Hajime, and Kenshirou work with Enki to fix things on a bureactraic level, frequently accompanied by Momoko when she isn’t a sole representative in front of various international governments. Hajime knows the prison model perfectly, Kenshirou understands the police aspect that ties into it, and Kiji has several decades of experience serving as a prison guard, and their combined knowledge leads to many of their proposals being pushed pretty far up the ranks. 

- Samon is working on fixing prisons on the level of how each inmate is treated. All the official and formal changes in the world don’t change that there’s also issues with inmates not receiving care, sufficient entertainment, decent things for purchase and not just whether or not they can afford them, all sorts of stuff that slips past the cracks in the paperwork. He’s also the one who’s pushing for  more rehabilitation programs with Kiji and Mitsuru’s help. Between Samon’s knowledge of physical needs of people, Kiji’s balanced addition of general knowledge of what kind of education and paperwork prisoners need for proper rehabilitation to stick, and Mitsuru’s experience in communication, they have a very solid structure. Mitsuru’s ability to middleman and talk to Momoko also helps push their ideas forward.

- Slowly the buildings become more friendly towards one another. Upa smiles more because Nico helped him get out of his shell, there is a photo of Tsukumo laughing as himself for the first time hanging on the wall of Shiro’s restaurant, and Kenshirou’s dogs all adopted different humans to befriend and bond with. Qi gradually gets over his fear of dogs thanks to Musashi and ends up adopting one who works as a service dog for him and keeps him away from panic attacks and self-harming attempts, as well as (gradually) learning how to tell what kind of health Upa and Liang are presently in and alerting the doctor if necessary.

- The time-honored tradition of feuds between the different non-inmates and adults in charge of them continues, but they added in some new competitions. There are now options for multi-building tug-of-war, kids vs adults (and variations) relays, one v one competitions, and general tomfuckery. Most of the time Momoko is the referee, Mitsuru commentates, and although they rarely join in, they tend to tag-team and secure a near-effortless victory. If it’s every person for themselves, Momoko wins unless distracted by Hajime, at which point the rule of funny is frequently used to determine a victor.

[theorangelifeofriley]

Honolulu: Pearl Harbor, Punchbowl

July 24, 2021

We were to meet our driver at 8am this morning for our day at Pearl Harbor and the Punchbowl. There was much confusion about what to pack, since Pearl Harbor doesn’t allow bags at all – except maybe a small clear sandwich bag. I brought my home made wristlet – made out of a clear sandwich bag and some duck tape. We all packed things in my little wristlet for the day.

We got down to the little sitting area next to the pull-through driveway and our group was congregated with our guide for the day, Olav. Olav told us that we didn’t actually have anywhere to be until 1:30pm, so we had some time to make sure that we all had what we needed. And also that he would be with us all day and we’d be in the same car all day. He also strongly recommended hats and water bottles. We made several trips back up to the room to grab things. We also learned that Olav is unvaccinated, doesn’t believe in COVID-19, and is a staunch Republican who believes in his “Constitutional rights.” He is also an incredible font of knowledge about Pearl Harbor, and only occasionally threw in some of his slanted views. There is no way I’m going to be able to capture, or remember, all the information he told us – it was a continuous stream of knowledge for about 8 hours.

Eventually, we had all of our stuff, and we walked to the 15-passenger van, parked on the street behind the hotel. After we got settled, Olav took off through the city to the Punchbowl. The Punchbowl is a volcanic crater in the hills surrounding Honolulu. The center is a bowl – the crater – and they punched a hole through one of the crater’s rims to allow entry into the bowl. Hence the name – Punchbowl. Inside the Punchbowl is a national cemetery. There’s a monument at the end of it, and on the steps up to the monument is where Hawai’i holds memorial services for Veteran’s Day and Dec. 7. We’re not allowed to get out inside the Punchbowl, but we can drive through. Lining the driveway in the Punchbowl are Banyan trees donated to the US from China. China was our ally during World War II, and we helped to defeat the Japanese who had invaded and were conquering China. There are 48 trees, which represent the 48 states at the time of World War II. They’re beautiful trees that have been groomed to prevent additional roots from taking root.

The area is quiet and calm, and beautiful. There are no traditional white headstones like in Arlington. Instead, the headstones are flat. They used to be white wooden crosses but were changed to flat stone headstones to respect other religions – and allow for easier maintenance.

From the Punchbowl, we drove to Pearl Harbor, and to the USS Missouri BB 63, which is now a museum. As we drove through the city, Olav pointed out a neighborhood that burned when a bomb went astray on Dec. 7, 1941. He also described in detail what happened on Dec. 7, 1941 – the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. We learned about the SS Cynthia Olson which was sank en route from the mainland and Honolulu by a Japanese submarine on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. The passenger ship was carrying two soldiers to Honolulu but was a passenger ship. There’s a photo of the Cynthia Olson as it was sinking taken by a Japanese soldier on the submarine. The Cynthia Olson got a may day call out, and another passenger ship heard the call. That second passenger ship confiscated all the passenger’s binoculars and assigned watch duty to the passengers. When that ship landed, the USA government confiscated all of their radio records and logs. Olav believes the records were confiscated because they show the time of the Cynthia Olson’s may day call. If that call happened before the bombing at Pearl Harbor, but was ignored, it would look very bad for the US military command.

As we entered the Pearl Harbor base, we drove to a parking lot and Olav left us to get an officer who cam back and searched our van for bags. Once that was done, we drove over the bridge to Ford Island and the USS Missouri BB-63. BB-63 stands for Battle Boat 63 – the 63rd battleship the US built. This is necessary because there have been four USS Missouri’s. The current USS Missouri is a submarine that was also docked at Pearl Harbor today. Of course you can’t call it BS-63 (battleship 63) – so battle boat 63 it is. The BB-63 was the last battleship built in the world, the most powerful, and the last one to retire. It was launched during World War II, saw battle in the Battle of Okinawa, was where the Instrument of Surrender was signed by the Japanese to officially end World War II, served in the Korean War, was decommissioned in the 60s, then refitted in the 80s, saw duty in Desert Storm, before finally being retired in the early 90s, then being made into a museum. Its parked in Battleship Row – where all the Battleships were anchored on Dec. 7.

Olav told us a lot about how the Pacific Fleet came to be in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 – but then he seemed to contradict himself. The first story was that FDR ordered the Pacific Fleet to all be at Pearl Harbor as a “show of strength” to deter the Japanese. The Admiral of the Pacific Fleet thought this was stupid, because normally the Pacific Fleet rotated between several locations, and there was not enough of a supply chain, let alone docking berths, to allow the entire fleet to be in Pearl Harbor. He resisted, basically told FDR he was dumb, and lost his job. He had worked on the supply line, though, and worked on the docking situation too – which is how Battleship Row came to be.

As he told this story, I gathered that the next Admiral did as FDR wished and assembled the entire Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Olav made a point to say that FDR ignored the military advisors, and his Admiral, and all their knowledge to demand the fleet be in Pearl Harbor. Later, he told us that every year, the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet was required to inspect the fleet in Pearl Harbor. This always occurred on the Monday after the first Sunday in December. In 1941, that was Dec. 8. The Fleet was required to report to Pearl Harbor 24 -48 hours in advance of the inspection. Which then means that the fleet was assembled in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 in preparation for the inspection on Dec. 8 – which doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with FDR.

The deck of the Mighty Mo is covered in teak, which they did to preserve the steel deck, to lower the temperature inside the boat, and to provide a natural nonslip surface. The teak on the deck has been replaced three times, all using different processes. One time they messed up trying to save money by putting 1 inch of Douglas Fir below 1 inch of team (instead of 2 inches of teak) – not realizing that Douglas Fir rots faster than teak.

During WWII, the Missouri was attacked by a Kamikaze, which was captured perfectly on camera. We saw the place where the Kamikaze’s wing impacted with the Missouri. We also saw footprints on the deck where our personnel stood as they buried the Kamikaze pilot at sea as directed by the Missouri’s captain.

We toured the inside of the ship, which was interesting. They had several displays with stuff from the Missouri, the history of the Missouri, remnants from the Kamikaze attack, etc. We walked through the galley, the kitchens, the offices – including the dental office – the food lines, including the donut shop, the fast food line, and the Truman line, so called because the Truman family visited and used that food line. There were crew quarters everywhere – berths stacked 3 high, and each sailor’s locker. The kitchens were crazy – the appliances were huge, and they had everything you could want! Well, all the kitchen toys you could want. The Missouri was the first ship to have a network of interconnected computers which they called MO-Net. This was all before the internet was created. The inside of the Missouri was extensive – it seemed to go on and on. We saw throughout the ship ammunition chutes. And a couple of places that would be vulnerable to armor piercing rounds which can pierce through 16” of steel – so these areas were outfitted with 17” think steel. The guns on the ship were huge and could take out a target 25 miles away. The guns had to be fired over the water, because the rounds were fired at twice the speed of sound, and the concussion would tear the ship apart if the guns were fired over the ship. Missouri, the state, was responsible for providing the fancy silverware and place settings – which is interesting. There was a great map that showed where all of the different USS Missouris served. We saw the Chief’s lounge, and the Captain’s lounge, which was also used as a war room, and the tables can be used as operating tables in a pinch. It was a great insight into what the ship would have looked like while it was in service.

When we were finished touring the inside of the boat, we went to the deck, and then to the Quarter Deck. On the Mighty Mo, the Quarter Deck has been renamed the Surrender Deck, because it was where the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Forces to end World War II. Olav told a story about how MacArthur stepped out of the navigation bridge to walk down to the Quarter Deck but noticed that the Japanese contingent hadn’t arrived yet. So he went back inside, saying, “I’m not going to wait for them. They will wait for me.” He also told us that the British brought a fancy table they wanted to use for the signing, but the papers they were signing were too large to fit on the table. The Missouri’s Captain ordered a seaman to grab a folding table from the ship, and they used that. One of the Japanese had a false leg, and as he was coming up to sign the papers, he stumbled and hit one of the legs of the folding table. The crew, who knew it was a folding table, held their breath for the rest of the ceremony – hoping that the table didn’t collapse. (It didn’t.)

On the Surrender Deck, there is a plaque where the table was and the documents were signed. There’s also a display with replicas of the documents. On the replicas, you can see that the Canadian representative signed on the wrong line on the first document. There’s a picture of someone making sure that he signed on the correct line on the second copy!

They’ve positioned the Missouri so that the bow of the battleship points to the bow of the USS Arizona. The ship that started the US involvement in WWII and the ship where WWII ended pointing to each other.

We finished on the Missouri, went to the gift shop, got some Dole Whip, and then drove to the Pearl Harbor Memorial area for lunch. Lunch was at a permanent food truck outside, and was decent, although Meg and Marie didn’t like their nachos or hot dog. After lunch, we went to watch a 20-minute movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor, before making our way to the ferry to the USS Arizona Memorial.

Olav detailed how the attack happened but of course I’m not going to remember everything. There were three waves of attacks – the dive bombers, the torpedoes, and the other type of bombers. Eek. They came from different directions, and in two separate waves. There were about… or over?... 300 planes in total. The battle lasted for 2 hours. Most all of the ships that were sunk were eventually retrieved and put back into service, except for the Arizona, the Oklahoma, and the Utah. The Japanese adjusted bombs? Or torpedoes? With an additional fin that allowed them to fun in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor and hit Battleship row. I think Olav also indicated that the aerial bombers were not the ones that caused the most damage, generally – it was the torpedoes.

The ride out to the memorial was quick – the warnings about not misbehaving on an active Navy boat were almost as long as the ride itself. Once the ferry docks, we disembarked, and headed back to the back room. The memorial itself is a white concrete building. The architect was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps and wanted to build the memorial to remember the lives that were spent to save and free so many across the world, including in the concentration camps. The structure is a loose U-shape. The low point in the middle represents initial defeat at Pearl Harbor. The inclines on either side represent the slow climb to victory in Europe and the slow climb to victory in the Pacific. There are seven cut outs along either side and the top, which were for structural integrity, but have later been said to represent a 21-gun salute. The structure is situated across the middle of the sunken USS Arizona – the ship heaviest hit by the attack on Dec. 7. 1,177 seamen were lost with the Arizona and never recovered. Another 41 of the survivors, or relatives of those lost, have chosen to be interred in the Arizona.

As soon as I set foot on the dock, I smelled the oil or gasoline from the wreck. You could see it on the water, too. There is oil still leaking from the ship and will continue to leak for decades more. There were a lot of people at the memorial, but it was mostly quiet, as is fitting. We walked right back to the room where the names of those buried here are displayed. It’s made of the same marble as the headstones in Arlington. The room is beautiful but somber.

Just outside of that room is a hole in the floor of the structure that is situated over a part of the ship. I didn’t see much there. Outside, on either end of the structure, there are two white buoys that represent where the bow and the stern of the ship are. There are also pieces of the ship, like the gun turrets, and the flag staff, that are still sticking out above the water. It was a moving experience.

After the ferry back to the main site, we went and toured the USS Bowfin – a retired submarine that is only 27’ in circumference. It was tiny, and holy cow does it seem miserable to have served on it. They call it the Silent Service – the work of the submarines. The Bowfin was launched on Dec. 7, 1942, and was therefore nicknamed The Pearl Harbor Avenger. The kitchen was tiny, and only had minimal toys. Olav tells us that the food was cooked on the mainland, frozen, and placed in the submarine’s freezers.

The worst thing was hot bunking. There were only 36 bunks on board the submarine, but about 86 sailors on board. So they rotated beds – multiple people shared a bed. With the temperatures on the submarine running in the 90s or 100s, the beds were wet with the other guy’s sweat. Yuck.

The doorways between the areas of the ship were so small and short too! It was a workout to squat and contort myself through the doorways.

After the Bowfin, we drove back to the city Olav was kind enough to drive us to Costco. This Costco is the busiest on in America. I didn’t go in, but the parking lot was crazy! Anne, Aimee, and Marie went in to get food for the next few days, and they did a great job! Then, it was back to the hotel, and our time with Olav was over. He is a knowledgeable, talkative tour guide to be sure!

Back in the room, some of us split up for naps and downtime until dinner at 6:30. Rileys, Drew, and Todd stayed at our place to watch the Olympics and drink the 5th of rum we bought the night before. Todd made us a whole series of frozen drinks that were great, and did the job! We had a raucous good time watching Men’s Street Skateboarding, where the athletes wiped out more than they landed tricks. It was brutal!

We had tacos for dinner, and continued watching the Olympics, and the activity on the ocean. From our view from the living room and our balcony, we can see all the hundreds of surfers always hanging out on the water, and the couple that actually make surfing runs. There’s a lot of boat traffic, including a lot of boats that go out to watch the sunset. There’s also a surprising number of large cargo ships that travel pretty close to this beach. It was a great time tonight!

[graceverse]

Yeah ok, you asked for it.

An Unexpected Invitation

Part 2

He had never really, truly known silence. Even when he was alone, there is always that buzzing sound inside his head. Sometimes if he listened closely enough it would sound like the sharpest blade slicing through silk and flesh. Or if not that, then the softest exhale of a last dying breath; or the whispering sound of snow falling on snow.

There’s a Japanese word for that, shinshin.

One of the few things that he actually liked about this god forsaken country: the beauty of his own language. Though he so very rarely used it in all the years that he had spent in China, he was pleased that it was not lost to him. Unlike everything else that tied him to his motherland.

Not that China as a country is any better than Japan, but at least it wasn’t filled with ghosts that haunted him. And they were many; all the ghosts inside his head. Tomoe was just one of them. He wasn’t bothered by it. She’d smile at him inside his head and everything else would just fade away. It was just her and her smile and he was content.

Yukishiro Enishi had not expected any kind of silence inside his cell, which unfortunately faced the alleyway that the police used to move captured criminals, either in and out of the prison. There was always someone unruly, heavily protesting the indignation of being bound and dragged inside the building. If it wasn’t that it was pitiful wailing, asking for forgiveness, begging for another chance. Worst were the angry screams of denial, the insistence of their innocence. It annoyed him endlessly.

Reading Oneesan’s diary diminished the vulgar noises hounding him. With her diary clutched in his hand, it was just him and her words. He would gently turn the pages, trace the ink on paper and as he read it, he hear his sister’s voice. It calmed him down. Most of the time, at least. There had been a night of pure rage and the agony; finding out how his sister had hidden her true heart from him. He’d slammed his fist against the walls, banged his head until he thought it would crack open and all of his craziness will just spill out from his split head.

Why, neesan? Why couldn’t you have trusted me enough to let me know what you were planning?

But it had only been the briefest of moments where he felt betrayed. In the end, even with Tomoe’s diary, nothing could waver his conviction of his sister’s faultlessness in everything that had happened to them. Neesan had taken care of him ever since he could remember, his first memories had been of her touch, her eyes, her voice singing lullabies well into the night. She had tried to make everything better and she had the courage to marry the man that had slain her own love. But she had ultimately been too soft, too trusting. She had a woman’s kind and gentle heart and had allowed Battousai’s despicable lies to change her resolve for vengeance.

Would it have made any difference if he had known what neesan had really felt?

He doubted it. The mere presence of Battousai in their life invited danger and death. And he remembered how it made him feel so deeply ashamed that the hitokiri was living with his sister, tainting her with the blood of his victims.

There was no reason for him to feel deceived by his beloved neesan. Battousai would have, one way or another, caused her death. It doesn’t matter how. Testament to this was the fact that even now, despite having distorted himself into the foolishness of a rurouni – a shameful farce of trying to atone for his sins – the woman he had chosen, the Kamiya girl that Enishi had taken and failed to kill, had been subjected to several abductions and all sorts of regrettable torture. From almost choking to death from Udō Jin-e’s curse to nearly drowning when she’d been thrown out of The Rengoku, Battousa had turned her into a target. One that he had not been able to properly protect.

How many times had Battousai failed that woman? More times that Enishi could care count.

Battosai was cursed. All the lives that he touches, he befouls. And eventually, he does not even have to wield his joke of a sword, in the end, they will all turn into nothing but torn silk and spilled blood against pristine white snow.

----------------

It didn’t take long for the Mibu Wolf to come and visit him. They had taken him to a room barely lighted by the lone overhead lantern, madly swinging and throwing dark shadows around him. He would have snorted at this childish game that Saitō Hajime, now known as Fujita Gorō, had chosen to play. Did he think that he was someone that could be so easily intimidated? Did he need any reminder of what he was capable of, weaponless except for a child’s toy, on the trin when he had allowed to arrest him? Or was this some sort of insult that he was supposed to angrily respond to?

Enishi felt no emotion to be honest, even when Saitō started laying down all the documents that he had been able to confiscate from wherever he’d gotten them. It wasn’t until a signed confession from the useless Heishin that Enishi felt just a twinge of irritation. He should have bashed that bastard’s skull.

Wordlessly, he picked the paper, idly glancing at it before tossing it back, silently fluttering to the floor.

The wolf bared his teeth.

Did the government ordered the ever-reliable Fujita-san to ask him the names of all the ten battleships that he had? Because Shishio’s Rengoku was the smallest of those ships. Shishio Makoto was all fight and salivating insanity but he hardly had any money to sustain his quest for war. Enishi had practically given that battleship for free and it was purely out of curiosity. He had gotten into so much trouble with the Chinese organization that helped him obtain those ships. He had to pay it out of his own pocket but it was all worth it.

He had wanted to see just how far Shishio could get in a fight with Battousai. Not so much as it turned out. He couldn’t even properly bomb Tokyo as he had wanted to. It was all so very disappointing but not in the least bit surprising. These Hitokiri’s were mere berserkers, nothing refined in the way they planned their attacks. To defeat their enemy was all, kill, kill, kill and it bored him.

He kept his silence as Saitō explained how he had taken him this long to piece together everything that he needed to ensure that Yukishiro Enishi will be tried as a spy, a traitor to the Meiji Government and for that, they both know that the punishment is death.

Blah blah blah blah

Did the ex-captain of the Shinsengumi (first squad ­– he made you remember that at least, like it was supposed to mean something to anyone) now a special agent for the Meiji Government's Department of Internal Affairs, really think that he would be bothered by his impending death? Or a lifetime of imprisonment? Anything that they throw at him would only be a shadow of what he had gone through in Shanghai. The years of suffering from hunger and humiliation, disease and violence, training on his own to perfect his own fighting style?

Enishi was prepared to die and meet his sister once again.

Unless, and here, the cunning wolf flicked his still lit cigarette – a foul thing – over Enishi’s shoulder, the heat and ashes leaving a trail against his cheeks. He would kill him for that, Enishi thought, unblinkingly.

And then, the wolf leaned forward to tempt the tiger.

-----------------

Freshly released from prison, all of his papers proving the pardon so generously afforded to him by a government desperate to stop another war shoved inside the pocket of his jacket, Enishi calmly shook any traces of gunpowder residue from his hands. His now emptied warehouse (damn, the government for confiscating everything) was lighted with flames that will spread quickly enough. It would be a massive fire and Fujita-san would probably disapprove, but he did not, quite frankly, give a fuck.

He kept his head low, unhurriedly weaving in and out the crowd, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. His height has some disadvantages, true but he was still weaponless and without his watō slung against his shoulder, he looked like the usual foreigner traipsing around Tokyo, not a care in the world.

The Mibu Wolf will only give him his sword back if he could get the Kamiya-girl to agree. And something tells Enishi that this was really more to piss off Battousai than anything else. What a tiring game these two old fools were playing, but he will play along. He had nothing else to do anyway. And besides, his watō was at stake. He could probably just steal it from, escape Japan and just live out his life somewhere far from this madness but then, where’s the fun in that?

He had allowed himself a leisurely walk towards the dojo, the constant sound of summer surrounding him: tiny voices of children playing inside their yard, underneath the shaded trees; parents calling out for a refreshing sip of cold water; that buzzing sound inside his head.

He always had sensitive hearing, a secret weapon that he had incorporated to his Watōjutsu. It was a source of pride, how this swordskill is known only to him and how it could have finally defeated Battousai had that stupid Heishin ruined his plan. Kami, if the wolf had not killed him yet, he would be looking for him soon enough.

------------------

Enishi stood by the familiar entryway of the dojo, tilted his head and confirmed the only presence inside. He pushed the wooden gate and wordlessly walked inside, heading straight to the engawa, where for the first time in his entire life, he hears nothing but silence as he stared down at the Kamiya girl sprawled on the floor, napping it seemed.

Her dark hair was fanned around her face, not in a flattering way, to be honest. But the contrast of her hair and her skin and the peach-colored kimono she was wearing, riding a little high on her legs, exposing her knees, made her look almost --- precious.

No, no. He shook his head. Not precious, but so exposed and vulnerable. He glanced around him. No bokken in sight. And defenseless. Again, Battousai had left her like this? This supposed ruruoni must be addle-brained and as inept as Heishin. They both deserve to die.

But yes, how odd. Enishi thought, not even the sound of their breathing. Because he was certain that they were both breathing. He could feel the steady beating of his heart and as he squinted at her prone form, the rise and fall of her chest was quite obvious in her partially opened kimono.

The sight offered him a brief distraction and he had been just the tiniest bit surprised when she suddenly woke up and threw a tea cup at him.

Maybe not so vulnerable and defenseless then.

-------------------

She was feisty. He hadn’t known that she had it in her to fight like that. Clumsily and rather slow, but it could be that she was wearing a kimono, restricting her movement. He could not find fault in her fighting stance and with the way she swung her bokken, with outmost conviction, Enishi was certain she could lay waste to Heishin's pathetic bodyguards. Her skills were better than theirs at least and this was probably the highest compliment he was forced to give to a girl.

Her battle cry was also impressive. It brought back his hearing at least.

Now he could hear every whistling sound the bokken made as it sliced through the air; her panting breath, the way she muttered curses at him.

She was so very, very angry and he had done absolutely nothing to her but ask her if was already married. A rather important detail that he needed confirmation on if was really going to follow through with the wolf's sadistic plan.

Enishi needed her to calm down otherwise, he’d be forced to defend himself and then he would end up straddling, arms pinned above her – because that was the only way to get her to stop trying to hit him. Being motherless and growing up with his sister, Enishi thought he knew how to handle women or at least girls. But this Kamiya-girl, with her angry breathing and needless cursing was quite a surprise. The women he had dealt with in China were really almost similar to the women in Japan: docile and soft spoken, but apparently not this woman.

Was this the ruruoni’s choice? Or the Battousai? Enishi wondered if her violent temper triggered something in his worthless brother-in-law, because he could not understand how exactly did anyone take her so easily when she was like this?!

Another swing from her bokken and that was just an inch away from his nose.

The triumphant gleam in her eyes told him that she was aware of this and to prevent any further violence, Enishi finally stepped forward, which she must have taken as gesture of surrender, because she met him head on, bokken raised high on her head.

He grabbed it easily, tossing it away and wondering if he would have to break every damn bokken inside this training hall just to make her stop. Curiously, he asked her, without his formulated explanation because, really, he had forgotten everything that he had been planning to tell her, if she had wanted to go to Shanghai with him – well, it effectively shut her up, her whole body suddenly immobilized by surprise.

He let two seconds pass before he provoked her yet again with, “Is that a yes, Kamiya-san?”

Her eyes blazed and then, completely out of nowhere and totally unprepared for it, her fist connected with his nose.

It knocked off his eyeglasses and now ---- now he is pissed.

------

So I guess, tbc?!

[allyvampirelass29]

Killing Time

A HEROES Fanfiction By: Allyssa J. Watkins

He loved that he could touch her, even from across the room, that as long as she was in his sight, she was never gone from the reach, the caresses of his mind. Sylar turned his head towards his shoulder, and felt the weight of hers, the silkiness of her wispy curls, as he grazed the air, yet felt the fluttery sensation of her hair. The soundproof glass between them, kept him from saying what he needed to say, kept him from possessing that flooding power in hearing her breath quicken, and knowing he was the cause. But he could watch his effect on her through the one way glass, her head turning towards his phantom projection, and as she clinged to the air around her, he just knew....... As smoothly as he could turn a phrase with his silken tongue, his talented fingers were far more eloquent.

He smiled as he watched her own delicate hand reach up, search the air, and he felt his whole body seized with chills, that irresistible feel of her thumb stroking his dark brow over and over, and the tension in his back slowly released with his exhale. "God, I love when you do that," he spoke to the glass, and felt her melt against his hand as he placed it gently on her shoulder. To anyone watching, it would look like he was touching his own shoulder, but it was definitely hers, he could feel the feminine curve of it, and he imagined the tiny freckles dotting it like stars.

His heart panged, as he watched her lips move, speaking to the air, and he imagined the music of her laugh, as he watched it soundlessly. He'd give anything to know what she was saying to him. "You're a doll, Ally," He whispered painfully to the glass, releasing his hold, to edge himself closer to it. He watched her eyes shift from happy enchantment, to sudden fear, when she couldn't feel him anymore. "Hey, no, don't be scared I'm right here...…" He whispered, tapping on the glass, like he'd done every day since they'd been captured. If he hadn't been dosed up with enough brain paralysis to kill a baby elephant, he'd have shattered that glass by now. But with his powers leashed, and his body considerably slowed, all he could manage was the tapping, the weak reach, the projected touch. He couldn't save her, but as long as he could feel her, there was hope.

"Don't cry, no, Baby. Stop, you're killing me." The tears stung Sylar's eyes, as he watched her hug her knees, and sob quietly, her hair catching the light and veiling her face. He felt the pain of his own tears stoke the fire, the anger inside him, and using all of his strength he pounded the glass with his fist, harder and harder, over and over, his sadness becoming pure rage. Again and again, he watched his knuckles bruise and then heal, melt back into perfect skin. So he hit harder, the glass shuddering beneath his relentless attacks, and still, Ally could not hear him, and didn't so much as look up from her desolate sorrow.

"You're only making it worse, on the both of you." The Senator's voice was the match thrown into the dangerously full gasoline barrel, and Sylar hurled his whole body against the glass with a seething, animalistic yell.

"That glass, just this one piece, cost 20 million dollars, Buddy. You'd better believe it's bulletproof, blast proof, and 100 percent SYLAR proof. If I'd had the funding, you'd be in a box of the stuff right now. Wasting good drugs on you, makes me sick."

Sylar's eyes smouldered, his dark brow slanted, screaming murder, and his mind burned black with threats, too many to pick just one. Torture beyond anything he'd perpetrated before, horrendously bloody acts that would give even himself, nightmares. But his lips could only utter three words after the energy syphoned off from his intense physical exertion, and he felt his body fading, with the single, desperate plea still on his lips.

"Let. Her. Go."

"Can't do that friend."

It was all Sylar could do to steady his breathing, his heart pounding relentless against his chest with wounded rage, that wild, almost primal hunger to kill, and for the first time in months, he actually felt relieved Ally couldn't see him, blinded from the monster he was about to become. His very soul burned with bloodlust, the sleeping danger awakening. The killer emerges.

"SAVE IT!!!!" He snarled, nostrils flaring as he fended off the invading drugs that chained up his powers, his anger yanking on the mental restraints with an unhinged force. His forehead still rested against the glass, as he turned it slowly, methodically, toward the door, his eyes flashing with obsidian fire.

"Save your damn campaign speech, Senator, I am so not your friend. You play the benevolent leader, Mr. All American with such shocking deception. You put on a tie and a fake smile, and you HIDE behind that door and enact the horrors that you speak out against. As much as I love cruel and unusual punishment, you've just lost my vote. You're a monster, Nathan, you're worse than me, because at least when I kill my own kind, I don't pretend to care. I don't pretend that I'm going to save them."

The silence that followed was deadly in of itself, a cold void spreading through the sparse, empty room but when Nathan finally gave the order, it was edged with a severity that even Sylar had never thought capable of him.

"Open the door."

"Sir, we'd strongly advise against engaging the hostile."

"Oh yes, be a good boy, Nathan, and listen to your pathetic excuses for bodyguards. You've never experienced HOSTILE, until I've got you alone, locked in a room with me. You're going to need more than fancy drugs, and a twenty million dollar piece of glass to save you. You can use all the confiscated narcotics you want, if it'll make you feel safe, but I don't need my powers to kill you."

"You really think I'm scared of you?"

"No, Senator, I KNOW you are. But by all means, open the door...…. Let's play."

"Please, you've been so heavily sedated, hell, you should have OD'd twenty times over by now. You couldn't kill time."

"Haha that's good, I like that...… Killing and Time are my two favourite things. Even high, I can still do more damage than you can ever do to me. Whatcha gonna do, Buddy? Send me to death row, can I request the chair, that might be fun.”

"Don't you get it, Sylar? You're on Death Row."

Sylar froze as a red dot appeared on Ally's bare shoulder, as she sat, hugging her knees, and a low growl escaped from deep within his chest, his fingers starting to tremble.

"Alright, easy, white flag!" He fumed, throwing up his hands. "Fine, I'll play nice, just call off your sniper."

"Back against the glass, hands on your head, you son of a bitch."

"You're making me miss Bennet with that kind of sweet talk. Good times......" He snickered, turning his cheek inward playfully, brow raised, his eyes intensifying.

"Shut up! I'll shoot her, I swear to God. It's amazing, really, how many ways you can shoot a person and still keep them alive, just long enough, so that they feel each agonizing moment."

Sylar wasn't laughing anymore. He tentatively backed into the glass, and interlaced his fingers, as he put them behind his head, taking one last glance over his shoulder, and he didn't start breathing again, until the red dot threatening her pale skin, disappeared.

There was a loud mechanical sound, and the door slowly opened, as Nathan strode in, surprisingly unaccompanied, and it took every bit of Sylar's resolve not to tear into him on sight.

The young, square-jawed Senator regarded the tall, dark, and dangerous man before him, as though he were approaching a rabid animal, looking at him sideways, with great disdain.

"What now, Nathan, come to pat me down? You gonna rough me up a little?" He looked over his shoulder at the brown haired girl, her hands searching the glass in front of her with stricken eyes. He almost reached out to put his hand where hers was, when he remembered she couldn't see him. "You even think of doing that to her, I'll kill you. Nobody touches her, got it? Nobody but me."

Nathan's eyes narrowed as he ventured closer. "I'll do whatever the hell I want with her. She's the property of the United States Government now, you both are."

Sylar smirked at him, flexing his bent arms behind his silken head, his dark eyes dancing. "So, I'm like an acquired weapon of mass destruction?"

"More like Enemy of the State, an apprehended terrorist. Congratulations Gabriel, with a little help from the FBI, you no longer exist. There is no Gabriel Gray, meaning I can do whatever I want to you, hold you without trial, kill you without cause."

"So do it." Sylar snarled, his eyes snapping back to cold and impenetrable. "Kill me, Nathan. End it. Be the hero, everyone thinks you are. What are you waiting for?"

Nathan laughed without feeling, the hatred between him and Sylar rising like a scorched heat. "You think I won't do it? I was an officer of the United States Navy, I know HUNDREDS of ways to kill a man, and I'm pretty sure, you only know, the one." Nathan swiped his finger mockingly in front of Sylar's face, and Sylar smirked back, his gaze deadly.

"Just because I have my favourite weapon, doesn't mean it's the only trick up my sleeve. If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already. No, I'm going to kill you, Nathan, for doing this to me, to HER. I'm going to kill little brother, and Ma, and only after you're out of your head, seeing their bloody mangled bodies, their heads viciously ripped into, I'm going to make you beg me to kill you, and only then, will your little Superman charade end."

"You dressed up in my brother's face and tried to kill me, you SICK bastard!!! Who does that!? Did you really think I wouldn't retaliate?  You tried, and you failed. You used someone I loved against me, and you still lost. Don't be surprised when I do the same, go dark, and I follow through for the win."

"Look, I get that you're pissed, I know, I ruined your little ball and tricked all your big, fancy Senator friends. You want blood? Take it. Take it all...…. Torture me, kill me, bring me back, just to kill me again, maybe I deserve it, maybe I don't, do whatever the HELL you want, even let Peter get his, but don't punish her for my sins. My blood for hers. You already have me, you don't need her anymore, so, please...… let her go. You do that, and I might just let you live."

"Look at me, Gabriel, look right into my eyes. Never gonna happen."

Sylar could feel his skin prickling with the chills coursing through his body, the coldness of a killer, creeping into his dark features, his voice like ice.

"I said...… Please."

"No deal. You see..... I'm not going to do any of that to you, Gabriel. Because I know that whatever punishment I inflict, government sanctioned or otherwise, nothing is going to hurt you worse, nothing is going to make you behave more than the constant threat of what could happen to her. Why do you think I designed the glass so that you could see her, but she can't see you? Because I want you to see it, what I do to her, every time you get out of line. You so much as look at me a way I don't like, I'll take action, and it won't be me, hurting her, it will be you, your hand. I don't want your worthless blood, hers is so much more valuable. I'm going to take as much as I need to replicate that power, increase it enough to protect entire armies. This is a whole new level for our military, and on behalf of the United States Government, I thank you for your generous contribution."

Sylar's rising anger chilled into paralyzing fear, and he shook his head incredulous. "You're insane. She doesn't have enough electricity for that kind of scale, or enough blood for such rigorous testing...…You'll kill her."

Nathan smiled, his teeth gleaming, looking every bit the congenial politician. "If that's what it takes. I guess, we'd better get started." Nathan made a motion with his hands, and Sylar dropped his arms, failing to hide the abject horror flooding his eyes, feeling sick.

"What did you just do? She's- She's an innocent girl!!!!!"

"Wrong. She WAS an innocent girl. You stole her innocence. YOU ruined her, and got her all mixed up in the MURDER plot of a US Senator!!! She'll PAY for your sins, because they're her sins too, she deserves what's coming."

Sylar shook his head, his brow pulled back, as he sank desperate to his knees. "Nathan, listen to me, she didn't know, I swear!"

"Ever hear of guilty by association?"

Sylar whirled his head around, just as two fully equipped S.W.A.T. members stormed into Ally's side of the room, one of them roughly tackling her to the ground, the other taking a long needle from a cylindrical container.

"NOOOOOOO!!! Nathan, GOD, Nathan, don't do this, I'll do ANYTHING you want, I'll kill whoever you want me to kill, I'll be a damn saint, just don't- Don't hurt my girl." Sylar's tears streamed freely now, his chest so tight, he couldn't get air to his lungs and they burned, as he watched with blurred vision, Ally screaming without a sound, fighting back and sobbing. He bristled as the one holding her down backhanded her across the face, and felt his own jaw sting with the assault.

"Not My Baby...…. Don't hit her, don't hit my baby!!!!" Sylar's voice was hysterical, failing to suppress his sobs, his emotions heightened because of the drugs. Nathan had never seen him like this, and he liked it. He liked it a lot.

"You want it to stop? Fall at my feet. Beg like the pathetic creature you are."

Sylar started to scowl, his lip quivering with both rage and pain, an emotion swathing him that was more dangerous than anything he'd ever felt before, Self Sacrifice. 

"Never."

"Hey Tom, I'm going to need you to bleed her." Nathan spoke calmly into his earpiece."

"Like HELL you are!!!!!" Sylar's rage burned through the pain, engulfing him and Nathan in the catching flame like wildfire, as he hurled himself at him with murderous intent. But the drugs had dulled his reflexes, and Nathan slammed him hard into the glass, grasping his jet black hair, and holding his forehead against the glass, as Sylar struggled against him, growling.

Ally was still fighting hard against her attackers too, but they overpowered her, one of them returning the needle to the container, retrieving, instead, a scalpel and silicone cup. Sylar released the full force of his scream into the glass, feeling the vibration against his lips, the sound reverberating through the room, echoing through the entire space, as the blade sank into Ally's pale skin, dark red blood trickling down her forearm, into the waiting cup.

His body couldn't take it anymore, between the drugs and the horror he broke...…. Sylar sobbed bitterly, and Nathan loosened his hold on the back of his head, letting him fall, helpless, to the ground, legs crossed, looking like a frightened little boy, instead of a cold blooded killer.

"You really do love her."

"Please," Sylar breathed the single word, his voice frail, his eyes sincere.

"Fall at my feet, and I make it stop."

Sylar gritted his teeth, his cheeks shiny, wet with tears, the image of Ally's silent scream haunting him, begging him. He couldn't take it. He'd been compromised, and it terrified him what he'd do if it meant keeping her alive. Sylar got all the way down on the floor, revolted by the utter degradation, hating Nathan, and even more, hating himself.

"Hey Guys, that's enough for tonight. Get the girl bandaged up, and get the sample to the lab."

Nathan looked down at Sylar like he was a loathsome thing, an insect on the floor, and Sylar held his breath, as Nathan stepped directly onto his fingers, digging his heel in. 

"Look at you, The Big Bad Wolf...…. Now, you're just a whimpering pup. I own you."

Sylar had to bite his tongue to keep his scathing response from escaping his lips, and he seized up, his back arching, as he felt the pin prick in the back of his neck, a new rush of drugs flooding his system, his eyes going blank.

"Sweet Dreams, you Psychopath."

Sylar passed out on the floor, unable to fight off the heaviness of the newly introduced drugs mingling with the lingering effects of the ones previously administered, his mind paralyzed, and his body exhausted. Nathan strode out of the room, and the mechanical sound echoed through the space, as the door locked itself behind him. The lights died, darkness washing over Sylar's still form, his arm outstretched.

Silence.

Then.... the intercom crackled, as someone turned it back on, a bit of feedback, and a voice filled the room.

"Sylar!? Sy? Baby, can you hear me?"

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[kateis-cakeis]

A Dramatic Retelling of L’Manberg’s History

Once upon a time there was a wonderful place called L’Manberg.

What would one day be nothing but a smoking crater waiting to be rebuilt into something else, something new… started out as a humble van on the outskirts of the Dream SMP’s occupied lands.

The Camarvan, the hto dog van, whatever you want to call it, stood proud on a sliver of land, amongst the grass and sand, with a crafting table sitting in front of it, and a land marked forever by a man of the name Wilbur.

What started out as a simple quest to confiscate brewing stands and any potions drugs in order to create rising demand to reap the rewards, became something so much more. Perhaps even unbelievable to all those involved at the time.

It occurred shortly after the Disc War, this. And when a man of the law, Sapnap, realised that Wilbur and his accomplice, a child, Tommy, were actually making drugs in the Camarvan, Sapnap cracked down on them. Killing Tommy on the spot.

Henceforth, a dream was formed. Of a place where men could go and emancipate the tyranny of their rulers. A place where they could make drugs in their Camarvan in peace. With tilled ground that was sacred, with walls being built to protect them, their values bold and strong. Even nature was to protected on their land.

Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend, joined their cause. Eret too, a man who would later take their great walls and build them even taller, even better. And finally, Fundy, Wilbur’s son, the person who was to be kept safe within their walls.

A place called L’Manberg, with a Camarvan in the middle, and Blackstone walls with yellow and black concrete protecting them.

But their peace did not last long, as in the very moment Wilbur wrote their Declaration of Independance, a book was delivered by Dream, the leader of the Dream SMP. The Declaration of War.

From that point onwards, L’Manberg would never be the same.

After hours of planning, of farming resources, the day of the war came. TNT cannons had been set around L’Manberg. Tommy was shot dead on the doorstep of the Camarvan. And the old Wilbur Soot was finally given armour to protect him.

You see, L’Manberg had another value. They did not fight wars with weapons or armour, they fought them with their words. Words that would never be valued by tyrants, and so the five of them had no choice but to fight.

Wilbur put Tommy in charge of their small army, and they went forth from tower to tower, arrows fired from both sides. Until… Dream’s people retreated, their arrows unable to go high enough to reach those who were firing upon them.

Eret… had a backup plan. To go home, and to go to his secret room, filled with weapons and armour, to at least give them all another chance. They went underground, sneaking along the floors to avoid detection.

All was well.

Until they made it to the room. All the chests were labelled, all were empty. A button lay in the middle of the room, and as Eret pressed it, the walls opened up and every single one of them was slain.

‘Down with the revolution, boys!’

Eret had betrayed.

With Tommy left angry, Wilbur left shocked, and Tubbo and Fundy unable to provide any supplies nor words, it was all coming to a close very quickly.

With one final stand at the entrance of L’Manberg, a single TNT block was placed. ‘Independence or death’. And in that moment, the TNT was lit, and with arrogance, Wilbur told his people to stand back, to avoid it hurting them. Little did they know that L’Manberg had been rigged, and now… the Camarvan and part of their land had been left in ruins.

Wilbur grabbed the Declaration of Independance, and Tommy led them down into a secret hole he had made in the event of an escape. Right to a room of obsidian, to keep them safe. ‘Any last words?’.

Tommy shouted at Dream, screamed, asking for a battle. A 1v1, half a heart, bow and arrows. And so they went to the path down by a river, and made their stand. Wilbur counted down. ‘Ten paces, fire!’. And Tommy died once again, felled by an arrow.

The deal? If Tommy lost, L’Manberg’s independence was over. If Dream lost, L’Manberg would have its independence.

Hopeless… broken… exhausted… The people of L’Manberg returned home, but Tommy did not go with them, not yet at least.

And then… he returned, with their independence. Confused and lost, his fellows asked what had happened. How could this be? But Tommy had given Dream something that he dearly wanted, from a past war won. His discs.

He gave it all up for everything he believed in.

A new era was born, with the people of L’Manberg free. Eret was now the King of the Dream SMP, having betrayed his fellows for the promise of the title, land, and power. Wilbur refused to call him King.

In time, more joined them, and they lived well… for a while. Their flag was built, and houses were constructed outside the walls. All… was fine, great even.

Until the elections.

Wilbur sort more power, he wanted to create a one party system, assigning Tommy as his Vice President. With no one else on the ballot, they would surely win, and gain more power in their lands. But through arrogance, they spoke of their plans to Quackity, and quickly, he disagreed, putting himself down on the ballot.

After all, Wilbur was a threat to their democracy. ‘A single party? Are you kidding me?’.

With Quackity on the ballot and GeorgeNotFound as his Vice President, the die was cast. Wilbur and Tommy as POG2020, Quackity and George as SWAG2020. Two parties. But that didn’t last for long.

Fundy kept flipping between sides, hurting his father greatly, thus beginning a long conflict between Wilbur and his son. Eventually, Fundy formed COCONUT2020, and another name was forced by the people onto the ballot.

But that was not the end, as Wilbur’s endorsement, Jschlatt, did what could not be predicted. He ran for president too. And after a long night of death, after Schlatt got his hands on an axe and a gun, Schlatt too was put on the ballot and it was sent out to the people.

A day and two hundred thousand votes later, the results were announced. Fundy had committed voter fraud, and thus only got a small percentage of the vote, 9%, rather than the thousands he had hacked. Schlatt got 16%, SWAG2020 got 30%, and POG2020 got 45%. By all means, Wilbur and Tommy had won, they had retained control of their country but… it was not so simple.

As, on the night of the election, Quackity made a deal with Schlatt to pool their votes, no matter what. With that combined, they had 46% of the vote. They… had won.

Schlatt proceeded to make a speech. His first decree, ‘as the president of L’Manberg, the emperor!’, was to revoke Wilbur’s and Tommy’s citizenship. They were exiled from the very country they had created with their blood, sweat, and tears.

They ran through the forest, even further into lands unexplored and untamed by the Dream SMP. They dug into the land, blocking up the door with dirt. And… they mined into the rock, finding not one but two ravines! This… would be their new home.

Pogtopia.

Soon, Technoblade joined, a warring man, and a retired potato farmer. He was happy to join Pogtopia, because it was them against the world, against a tyrannical government! ‘Did someone say rebellion?’.

Tubbo, Secretary of State, was kept by Schlatt, but he was no loyal subject. He was a spy for Pogtopia. Fundy, who tore down the walls in front of his father, ‘the walls I built to keep him safe’, who burnt down the flag, ‘Fundy, you bastard!’, was not on Schlatt’s side either, but was instead keeping a detailed diary of his condition to one day show to his fellows, to show to his father in Pogtopia.

A festival… The Red Festival, if you will. A celebration of democracy. Only a couple of weeks after the election.

Tubbo built all the decorations. He wrote a speech, there were plans. So… so many plans.

Wilbur… only a week before, when the festival was announced… had realised something. He was the villain. He was trying to fight for something back that wasn’t his, not anymore, he had lost the election. His nation was far behind him.

‘Dream, I want to be your vessel’. There was one thing he could do. Killing Schlatt wouldn’t solve anything, he would just be replaced by Quackity, which could have been worse, and George was in line after that. Nothing would change. And if they took it back by force, they lost too. There was no way of winning–

Except… to blow it all up. Destroying it was a win in Wilbur’s eyes, because ‘I say, if we can’t have Manberg, no one! No one can have Manberg’.

The plan was set. Dream gave Wilbur the TNT and soon, the festival arrived. While Wilbur and Tommy hadn’t been invited, Techno was, and he was prepared with a crossbow and fireworks.

The festival was going well, until Tubbo’s speech. ‘Tubbo, I know what you’ve been up to’. The jig was up, Schlatt knew Tubbo was a spy for Pogtopia. Everything made sense! The tunnels that had been dug, him walking off during great events!

Techno was brought up to the stage, asked to take Tubbo out. Cracking due to mild peer pressure and the threat of twenty people slaying him if he disobeyed… ‘Tubbo, I’m sorry’. And with two firework rocket blasts, Tubbo, Quackity, and Schlatt lay dead.

Wilbur ran off to his room, to his button, to his TNT. Tommy threw a pearl, tried to attack Techno, failed, and stood where Tubbo had died, yelling his name. Techno, crazed with his power, turned on the audience and fired upon them, killing many. Voices in his head screaming, ‘Blood for the Blood God!’.

Unable to find the button, Wilbur ran home. L’Manberg got to live another day. Everyone returned to Pogtopia, a shaken Tubbo, an angered Tommy, a peer pressured Techno, and a blindsided Wilbur. Niki came to join them too, shaken up by the festival and by the revelation of TNT under Manberg.

Crazed by the idea to make Tommy and Techno fight – for his own entertainment – Wilbur created a pit. ‘It stays in the pit’. Techno won the fist fight against Tommy, repeating that their differences, that the anger stayed in the pit, not to be spoken about outside it.

‘The only universal language is violence’.

The TNT was an ever living threat, brought up by Wilbur at any given opportunity. He was going to blow it up. He was! The day after the festival, he took Quackity and Tommy to his room, L’Manberg’s anthem scribbled on the walls, alongside a button that was right in the middle.

He did not set it off that day. Quackity and Tommy pleaded, and it was agreed that Plan A would come first.

A meeting would be set up with Schlatt and they would end it there. If it went wrong, Plan B, Plan Bomb, would come into effect.

And soon, the meeting occurred. Quackity had written a building permit to trick Schlatt into signing Manberg over to him. It was all going so well, until Schlatt revealed that he knew the truth. That Manberg had been rigged with TNT. He claimed to have taken it, claimed to have put it under Pogtopia, but that was neither here nor there, as Wilbur went to the room while Tommy and Quackity were trying to trap Schlatt in the woods.

Suddenly scared to where exactly Wilbur was, they shouted and screamed, yelling out, trying to find where Wilbur had gone.

And Wilbur… pressed the button. Yet no hiss followed, the TNT was indeed gone. Panicked, he told Tommy and Quackity not to touch any buttons in Pogtopia, which had been filled with the things as a prank by Fundy.

When Wilbur returned home, he realised someone running through their tunnels, ‘It could be my traitor son!’. Fundy finally revealed what he had been doing this whole time, showing Wilbur his diary. Finally, they had their people back from Schlatt.

But the worst was yet to come. Dream joined, telling them that Schlatt had given him something, that he would be on his side henceforth, and finally, that there was a traitor within their ranks. Everyone pleaded their innocence, and trust was broken, but not enough to stop the incoming war.

The 16th of November. A month to the day after the festival.

For the next 10 days, people farmed on both sides. Netherite was acquired, enchantments were gotten, weapons were crafted, and Wilbur mined a double chest worth of sand.

The TNT plot was still in effect, except now, he needed more. Dream would get him the gunpowder, the TNT was assured.

Then… the day came.

It was just like the first war, with double the people. Except there was one notable difference… this was no freedom fighting revolution, this was a coup. Schlatt was a democratically elected leader, not individuals fighting for their independence.

Pogtopia and its allies went running in, firing upon Schlatt and his people. Mainly his people, as Schlatt went missing. They fought and fought, until Dream spoke up, asking to talk to Wilbur. Echoes to the past once again. Wilbur shouted out to his people, asking them to put their weapons down. Yet, he claimed he had no power over them. Still, they did so, and Dream led them into the ruins of the Camarvan (never rebuilt to its former glory after it had been blown up).

Schlatt was in the centre… dying. But not without arguing with Quackity and Fundy before his… time. At one point, it seemed as if Wilbur was going to stab him, or that Tommy was going to shoot him dead, but no… he simply died of a presumed heart attack or a stroke.

With their enemy gone, and Dream surrendering because Schlatt was an idiot, the war was won! The rebellion won! It had worked! Even though the odds were against them at first, they managed to come out on top.

Wilbur called on Tommy to be President, but instead, as he gave a speech, he rejected it. He was not done, not until he had his discs. So he called on Wilbur, and while he mentioned that the new obsidian flag had to be brought down, he declared that Techno had taught him something, that government was not the way to go, so Wilbur… called on Tubbo.

Tubbo would be the new President of L’Manberg. He gave a great speech, everything was going so well. They had won, it was over, it was finally over.

But Wilbur pulled away, claiming that he’d be right back. He climbed out of L’Manberg’s borders and went over the hill, into his room. The button room, with the anthem on the walls. ‘That there was a special place. There was’.

He was finally there. It was his moment… to finally press the button.

Then Philza walked into the room. ‘What are you doing?’. But while Phil, Wilbur’s dad, had a conversation with him, Phil’s mere presence alerted Techno to his side of the plan. He was the traitor, along with Wilbur. He killed Tubbo with his fireworks once again, and went off to kill Tommy too, alongside Dream.

Meanwhile, in the button room, Phil pleaded with Wilbur. But… his son was too far gone. It was time, he had been here too many times before, he had to do it now. He talked about what Eret had once said, a long time ago… ‘It was never meant to be’. And the button was finally pressed.

The hiss came.

Then the explosions followed.

Phil stared out in horror at the crater before them, the button room now an open window into the chaos caused by the TNT. Crystals were placed by Dream to cause more damage, and Techno went off to complete his part of the plan, trying his best to get his speech out with no interruption.

Wilbur triumphant, threw his sword over to Phil, asking him, begging him to kill him. But this was no sad set of words, it was just a man who wanted to be killed because the people wanted him to die. So the crowd watched. ‘You’re my son!’. Phil turned and killed him, and Wilbur began his long walk back to L’Manberg, warning Phil of the withers that were about to be spawned.  

Techno finished his speech, and two withers were spawned, destroying much more of the land. More TNT was set off, and L’Manberg was left in even more of a state.

‘I’ve won! We’ve won! Me and Technoblade’.

Wilbur left. The withers were killed. Tubbo proclaimed he would rebuild. And new members joined the lands of the Dream SMP.

L’Manberg wasn’t ended by the TNT, but the TNT did end another era of its life.

Who knows if it will retain that name. Who knows if it will ever truly be rebuilt into anything at all.

But what is known is that Schlatt’s Manberg died. Wilbur’s L’Manberg is long gone. And Tubbo’s L’Manberg is just the beginning.

It’s just the beginning.

[daisyquakes]

Gives You Hell || Discord

summary: Robbie takes it upon himself to break Daisy out of the Raft. But they see something unexpected on their way out that neither of them can let sit. trigger warnings: death mention, murder mention, suicidal ideations, mentions of torture, and general mentions of grief, depression, anxiety -- it’s dark and everyone is sad featuring: @vengeancedemons​

DAISY: There was a part of Daisy that wondered if the Ice Box would have been a kinder place to be hidden away inside. But there... there they had experimented on people like Daisy. Inhumans. Made them stronger - tried to weaponize them - but Dasiy was at the point of her isolation where she would have been happy to see anyone. Even a doctor with a blade in their hand and a devilish look in their eyes, just someone who would speak to her. But in the Raft, there were two guards that were posted at the end of the hall, watching the others like her that were in isolation. Ready to jump into action if anything ever happened.

Not that it did.

The only thing that ever happened was when they whispered to each other, and their incoherent words bounced around the otherwise empty space.

She had a moment with Matt and one with Alex... but since then? She had been on her own. Restrained in a straightjacket and left to sit in a room with nothing. No chair, no toilet, no sink. Three walls and the fourth made out of bars. And her only constant companion. Silence. (She wished she could hear the water currents running against the exterior, but Daisy was sure that she was in the center of the facility. There was no chance for Daisy to lose herself to white noise.)

Alex had told her that she’d get her out of here - that Daisy would be back on the outside but that it would take time, and Daisy didn’t know how much of that she had. Or how much of it had passed. (It felt like time passed differently inside the Raft... or maybe not at all.) Patience was hard when you were turned so far around that you weren’t sure what side of the planet you were on anymore.

tucked into the corner of her cell, Daisy stretched out her legs and tipped her head back, gazing off towards the other corner of her cell. A blank wall. Wondering if now was the time to start praying to the God she had turned her back on years ago - wondering if she could ask for anything after all this time.

ROBBIE: It would surprise no one to know that Hell brought with it no shortage of nightmares. Some nights, Robbie didn’t sleep at all. He lay in his bed for hours with screams still echoing in his ears, roamed the streets with the heat of phantom flames still biting the air behind him. What some people didn’t expect, however, was that Hell wasn’t the only thing that haunted him. Hell wasn’t the only thing marring his sleep, and his memories of fire and brimstone weren’t the only ones keeping him up at night. There was more to it than that.

Mostly, there was Eli.

A lot of moments with his uncle followed him around but, more often than not, it was the end that made his breaths come in short gasps, the last part that made his heart pound. Robbie’s mind went back to that last conversation, to the carbon spike through his chest and the madness in Eli’s eyes. Why’d you do it? He’d asked, wanting desperately to understand. Become a killer? And Eli, god, Eli hadn’t missed a beat. Well, I guess it runs in the family.

Eli Morrow tore Robbie’s life to shreds. His mistakes left one of his nephews in a wheelchair, the other dead on the concrete and damned to Hell. He’d ripped apart every piece of Robbie’s life that mattered, left him in shambles.

And it was, at the end of the day, a habit that ran in the family.

He’d been sloppy. That was all there was to it. He’d showed up at Daisy’s place drunk and stupid, begged her to take him to his Charger so he could steal it back. He’d been so desperate to regain that last piece of his uncle that he hadn’t wondered whether he might turn himself into Eli in the process. One mistake, and that was it. That was all it took. Robbie tore Daisy’s life to shreds with one mistake. And now, it was on him to fix it.

The moment he heard about her imprisonment, the moment he showed up to her apartment after those unanswered texts to hear her neighbor chattering about how they arrested the freak, took her to where she belongs, no doubt, Robbie began planning. He refused to be the man who raised him, refused to let this be just another of the awful things coursing through his veins. When Robbie tore someone’s life apart, when his actions resulted in someone innocent losing everything, he was going to make an effort to fix it. Even if he had to walk through Hell to do it.

God, he wished that was a fucking metaphor.

It was something he’d learned in his travels, something he’d discovered in researching how to get back to Earth. Time wasn’t the only thing that moved differently between dimensions --- space did, too. One step in Hell might mean a thousand on Earth. You could pop in in one place and pop out in another.

You could enter a portal in your shitty apartment and exit it in the Raft.

It wasn’t a perfect plan by any stretch of the imagination, and it took time to get it right. Robbie spent hours in his apartment figuring out exactly where he’d need to go, looking at coordinates and scouring shady internet messaging boards. He used his insomnia to his advantage, didn’t sleep for his own reasons. A tendency towards murder, as it turned out, wasn’t the only quality Robbie had inherited from his uncle. When he put his mind to it, when he really focused, he could tap into Eli’s smarts, too. He could plot the world’s most dangerous goddamn prison heist in a few days.

(And he knew a few days might still be too long. He knew that stories of the Raft painted it as the sort of place where minds were lost in hours. He knew that. He was just trying not to think of it.)

Getting the Rider to agree was difficult… but not as hard as it would have been if it were anyone but Daisy on the line. The Devil had always had something of a soft spot for her, and with the two of them working together, Robbie found himself stepping out of his portal just inside the door to her cell. He stepped into the cramped space on shaky legs, swallowing as he tried to put on the mask of a man who hadn’t walked through Hell to get there. Glancing down at her, he clenched his jaw and tried not to explode at the sight. She hadn’t been treated well, that much was clear. Robbie wanted nothing more than to walk out of this cell and kill every goddamn guard in this place, and he didn’t think the Rider would stop him. But… They had to go. If they wanted to make it out without him landing in a cell identical to this one, they had to go.

“You look like shit,” he greeted. “Wanna head out?”

DAISY: There was that crackling in the air again. That familiar sound that came with a smell of burning in the air - one that she had only smelt twice before. When Robbie was dragging his uncle to hell, and that day when he finally came back. It had the same smell in the air and Daisy could feel her heartbeat pick up with hope.

But it was short-lived.

Because as soon as Daisy’s brain started to process the expression on Robbie’s face, the familiar clench of his jaw - the way he looked as if he was about to tear apart a person with his bare hands. It was a look she had seen in his eyes before, and Daisy was over the ledge of delirium. So, she laughed. Of all the people she could hallucinate. Robbie.

“You know,” Daisy started, as the laughter finally subsided. “I expected to see Coulson, you know?” But saying his name caused her heart to ache immediately. (And what Daisy would give to hear some parting words of advice from Coulson?) Her eyes had locked into her hallucinations and she could feel her eyes burning. She wanted to ask him why he was there, why, out of everyone, he was the person she was losing her mind about.

Had she really gone so long without food and water? Would they leave her like this? Imagining people she cared about, stumbling into her cell, with some misguided hope to save her? Robbie told her she looked like shit and Daisy couldn’t help but smirk. “Sorry, Reyes, they confiscated my makeup -- if I knew I had a hot date coming, I would have at least brushed my hair. Now... get lost.” Daisy moved her leg and kicked Robbie.

Only... her leg made contact.

Her leg made contact.

Daisy leaned forward, her head tipping so she could look up at him. “You’re really here.” She tried to catch her breath, wanting to latch onto some sort of humor and pretend that she wasn’t completely fucked up - but she couldn't. She looked at Robbie, her mouth was slightly open while she processed the fact he was actually there. “Get me the fuck out of here.”

ROBBIE: For a moment, a fraction of a heartbeat, there was almost a smile on her face. Robbie wasn’t used to people looking happy to see him, particularly not when he showed up like this, with the smell of burning air and smoke following in his wake, but Daisy wasn’t most people. And, shit, Robbie wasn’t exactly his usual self around her. Typically, Ghost Rider reared his ugly head to send people into Hell. He was the last thing they saw before fire and brimstone took them over completely, the last face they saw on the right side of the grave. But Daisy was different. Daisy was always different.

At least, Robbie thought she was. But then that smile was slipping from her face and, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure.

Did she hate him for landing her in here? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to blame her if she did. It was his fault, after all, his selfish demands that launched her from the government’s nice list to the world’s most secure super prison in a matter of hours. Robbie’d been in Hell for years now, and in that time, Daisy seemed to have made out all right. She’d been alive when he came back. She’d been free. A few days of him back in her life, and she was here. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

She spoke, and Robbie’s brow furrowed, confusion clear on his face. “I expected to see Coulson, you know?” It took a moment for the realization to strike, took a beat for his mind to catch up to the situation.

Hallucinations were fairly common in Hell. Robbie had seen them often, either in the form of people he wanted to see, like Gabe or Daisy, or in the form of people he wanted to avoid, like Eli or Santino Noguera. He’d never stopped to think that the conditions here were dangerously close to the ones some people faced in Hell, never paused to consider just how thoroughly isolation could torture someone. Guilt washed over him in droves, and he pushed it away quickly. There’d be time to hate himself later. There always was.

Her foot made contact with his leg, and it was her turn to get that burst of realization. He noted the way her eyes widened, the way that flicker of hope was back and, selfishly, he was relieved for it. She didn’t hate him. For the moment, at least, she didn’t hate him. Maybe it was only because he was her ride, maybe she’d find time to be pissed at him the moment they landed back in New York, but it still felt good.

“I’m really here,” he confirmed with a curt nod. “And I’m really hoping you haven’t lost it completely, ‘cause the next part of this field trip’s really gonna suck if you check out on me.” He offered her a hand, ready to pull her to her feet. “We’re gonna get you out of that fucking jacket, Johnson, and then we’re gone. Won’t be much sightseeing on the way out. My shortcut doesn’t exactly come with a scenic route.” He nodded back to the portal still open behind him, Hell staring back at them both from within the circle. He doubted she’d like the ride, but the destination was definitely better than this shithole. And it was temporary. It was a few minutes at the most, and they’d be free. They’d be out. Robbie reminded himself of that over and over, desperate to calm his racing heart.

DAISY: The diet they had her on, Daisy knew that they were trying to control her more than just with the collar. The proportions, the choices, it was all to keep her body and her mind weak, so that just in case the collar failed, she’d still be docile. But how long had she been in here? Daisy didn’t know - and without knowing how many days had passed, she didn’t know how weak her muscles would be.

She wasn’t entirely sure what to tell him. Sorry that she thought he wasn’t really there? Or confess that it wouldn’t have been her first hallucination inside the Raft? It was one of those things that no matter how flippant Daisy wanted to be about it, it twisted her insides. She bit down on her tongue and tipped her head downward, hoping he wouldn’t notice the look in her eyes or call her out on how casually she talked to him like she had spoken to hallucinations before.

Maybe he was waiting until they were out of here - maybe he’d confront her about what she had been seeing on the other side of that portal... but she was thankful for the time to settle her mind. “I didn’t think---” Daisy cleared her throat and shook her head. “Alex said it’d take time. I would have told her not to worry about it if I knew that you were planning a jailbreak.” Not that Robbie had any way of letting her know he was on his way - it wasn’t like she could track him on her phone like Uber.

Robbie stretched out his hand and Daisy glanced up, shifting so that he could grab her arm easily. Her hands weren’t exactly an option considering the way the jacket was wrapped up. “I mean, I’m trusting you to navigate me through a hellscape and take me back to the real world - and -- really? We can’t do a direct flight?” Daisy quipped before turning so that he could undo the buckles on the back of the jacket. “Have to lose it a little to think a route through hell is the best way to travel.”

Joking was all she could do to try and tame the pounding in her chest. Her eyes darting towards the guards who were already on the radio, watching them - but thankfully, they had only seen Robbie from behind, and with any luck, the camera wouldn’t have caught his face either. (She’d double-check once she was on the outside. Brush off her hacking skills to protect Robbie from the consequences of his stupid choice to try and save her.)

“Hurry.” She urged. Daisy took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder at Robbie, “And please tell me... we’re not going to spend two years in there.”

ROBBIE: She wasn’t all there, though Robbie wasn’t sure if it was drugs, malnourishment, or the collar around her neck making her feel off. It could have had less to do with her and more to do with their surroundings, too, of course. Hell raged to his side, the portal wild and chaotic and, above all else, impatient. Hell didn’t like to be kept waiting. Behind him, too, there was Hell. Robbie didn’t know what went on within the walls of the Raft, didn’t know what sort of punishments they designed for those deemed dangerous enough to be imprisoned within it, but he knew it was bad. The Rider was stirring within him at that sense of desperation in the air. This is Hell, he was saying. This is Hell, too. Hell is mine, Reyes, you know it is. Robbie clenched his jaw, pushed the Devil down, and turned his attention back to Daisy. It wouldn’t be so easy once they stepped foot inside that portal but for now, they were still in Robbie’s world. Barely, but still.

She looked a little better than she had a moment ago, a little more settled. Maybe it was the knowledge that she was getting out, the fact that she’d soon be as free as a person could be with the United States government on their ass. Still… She didn’t look great. She’d still thought he wasn’t real, still looked prepared to fall over at any moment. Part of him wanted to squat down beside her, wanted to kneel at her side and take her face in his hands and look her in the eyes, to make sure she knew she was safe. Another part wanted to tear his way through the wall of bars behind him, to tear apart the guards outside, the ones on the other end of the radios they were speaking into, the ones in the cushy offices with the big paychecks coming in every month, every goddamn person in this hellhole. In the end, he did neither because neither would help her in the moment. Neither would get her out of that goddamn jacket faster.

He swallowed, throat dry and aching as he shook his head slightly. “Fuck time,” he said quickly, because he knew time wasn’t feasible. If you left someone in a place like this, took time to get them out through the legal channels, they wouldn’t come back the same. Robbie knew firsthand what it felt like to take your time clawing your way out of Hell. He knew from personal experience just how broken it left you. “I don’t know who Alex is, what she’s got planned, but fuck time. We’re leaving now. Okay?” He hoped she didn’t say no, hoped she didn’t ask him to leave her there. It would be a painfully Daisy thing to do, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach it. If she told him to leave him, he’d try to convince her until those bars came down, until those guards came in, until they tested their strength out on him. He’d already walked through Hell to get to her. It wouldn’t be much harder to stick around in it, if he had to. At least then she wouldn’t be here alone.

She shifted, and Robbie pulled her to his feet as quickly as he could, making short work of the straps on the straight jacket. He eyed the collar for a moment, but he could hear the crackling of the radio behind them and he knew they didn’t have time to deal with it here. “Yeah, well, if you don’t like the transportation I can always look for another flight. Just, you know, might take time. And I don’t think either of us want to spend a layover here.” He kept his voice light, but there was a tightness to it, too, a discomfort he couldn’t hide. They were both good at this, both skilled in telling stupid jokes while the goddamn world fell apart, but fuck, it wasn’t easy now. Nothing was easy now, not with most of his energy split between keeping the portal open and keeping the Rider at bay. “Plenty of people’d kill for a first class trip through the Underworld, you know.”

Behind him, he heard boots on the ground, and he knew they were out of time. It was now or never, this Hell or that one. Daisy told him to hurry, and Robbie nodded. “We’ll take care of the dog tags when we get settled,” he told her, taking her arm and leading her quickly into the portal. He caught sight of a guard entering the cell behind him, positioned himself between the portal and Daisy as the bullets flew in after them. The gate closed before anyone could follow, and Robbie sighed, letting out a groan as his lungs reinflated. “Stings like a bitch every goddamn time,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders with a grimace. Two shots landed. Not the worst show of resistance he’d ever faced. He could feel the Rider thrashing against the proverbial walls, desperate to get out of his cell now that Daisy was free of hers. “Uh, yeah,” he said, turning his attention back to Daisy. “I’ll do my best there, Johnson.” He grimaced again, shaking his head. “Look, I --- I’m not sure how long I can keep the other guy down. He gets out and I might not get out of here, but you will. Me and him have an understanding there.” Robbie shook his head again, taking a step forward. “Come on. New York’s this way.”

DAISY: Robbie knew the risk of coming here to break her out. He knew that if he wasn’t careful that there would be a cost - he had to know. Because Daisy’s faith in him in this moment hinged on her assuming that he understood what he was doing was dangerous and stupid and could harm everyone around them. If they got a good picture of his face, it wasn’t just Daisy and Robbie that would be in trouble, it would be every person they had wrapped their arms around. Every person that they looked at with even a hint of fondness in their eyes.

Neither of them had many people. Their families were limited - Robbie had Gabe and Gabe still thought Robbie was dead and Daisy... she had Matt (another person who had returned from the dead only for Daisy to find a way of fucking things up). But that bonded them, that burning feeling to protect the ones they did care about - and both of them were willing to walk through hell or take a bullet for the people they cared about. Robbie might not have been the hero type, but he was enough like Daisy for her to recognize it. The recklessness, the running headfirst into the fire, the Rider might not have given two shits about what happened to her.

But Robbie Reyes did.

And after all the shit she had dragged him through... he could have left her there. He could have shrugged off her being in the Raft and settled on it being someone else’s problem - he could have left Daisy to suffer the consequences on her own. But he didn’t. Not that Daisy would have blamed him for leaving her to the wolves - he had people to take care of himself, after all. (Him being there… it meant something. Even if it was unsaid, even if neither of them looked at each other and said that it, it was something.) “Fuck time,” Daisy repeated in a murmur. “Yeah... we’re going now.” Repeating his words, letting them echo in the space around them a second time - made them feel more real for her. Alex might have been able to clear Daisy’s name if given time, but as disoriented as Daisy was now, she wasn’t sure who she’d be once Alex sorted everything out. Daisy wanted to think that she could resist it, that she’d be the same at the end of it… but she knew better. Every mission she had gone on had left a deep scar across her psyche, why would the Raft be any different?

Space had taken so much from her. The Framework. Every other mission she had followed Coulson and her team on – it all took something. It was a miracle that there was any Daisy left to salvage. There was a very real possibility that it was Daisy that gave up on herself long before anyone else did... but in this case? How many could say they survived the Raft? This was the end of the line for most people like Daisy. Giving up was logical. Giving up was what sane people did. Coming to terms with their reality - another thing that sane people did. (Was Daisy sane? Or would she have driven herself crazy with some misguided idea that she’d be freed from this prison?)

But fuck time. Robbie was there - and there was no need to worry about what might have been. Robbie was there and Daisy hadn’t lost her mind. That’s all that mattered. The now. Daisy just had to focus on it. "That a joke about murder, Reyes?” Daisy huffed a laugh, letting herself find some odd comfort in his humor. (Focusing on anything but their surroundings - and even if it was Robbie’s gallow humor, she’d embrace it.) On the other side of the portal, Daisy turned around to watch as Robbie’s body threw out the bullets it had taken. She tried not to think about it as she started undoing the rest of the jacket. It wasn’t even about the heat of hell, it was the feeling of being restricted. (She would have torn off the collar too, but Daisy wasn’t sure what could force the damn thing off.)

“Fuck that, Reyes,” Daisy shot back immediately. The Rider wasn’t something that Robbie could control - not always - and this... this was his domain. She could only imagine how loud the Rider got here. “Don’t you fucking dare,” she warned. He had just gotten back - and he was already jumping back into hell? (No that wasn’t what was freaking Daisy out - it was another person willing to give up their life for her without asking what she wanted. Another person that would be destroyed because of her. How many names until it would end? Or would it end with her name?)

And what fucked up universe brought Robbie back to Earth and then stole him away immediately after? (The one they lived in, clearly.) She was ready to start yelling at him, Daisy stepped closer to him, reaching for his collar, ready to threaten to fight the Rider herself if the other guy thought for two seconds that Daisy was going to let that happen - not that she was much of a threat with the collar locked around her neck... but before she could start, she heard screaming. The anger quickly faded and Daisy couldn’t tell if it was because of the screaming - or the place they were in - but she was on edge. “Robbie...”

He said something about New York being a certain way - but all Daisy could focus on was the cheering and screaming, the sounds of a mass of people grouped in one area. On the horizon, it came into focus, it looked like a coliseum, an arena, a battleground. There was a woman being dragged towards it. A blonde - not just any blonde, Daisy recognized her. Trish Walker. “Do you see that?” Daisy asked, rubbing her forehead as she blinked, and when she opened her eyes... it wasn’t Trish she saw anymore. It was Coulson.

(It couldn’t be. It wasn’t the real him - it was a specter. It had to be.)

Daisy grabbed Robbie roughly by the arm, fueled entirely by panic. “Where is it? The portal - we need to go now.”

ROBBIE: There were a thousand different ways this could go wrong. Robbie knew each and every one of them, had a lengthy list of worst case scenarios lined up in his head. He could get caught here. They could put him in a cell in the Raft and he could rot until the Rider finally allowed his body to give out on him, until the Devil let him go from one Hell to another. He could get stuck between here in New York. The Rider could take him over at the last moment, could shakel him in his own mind all over again, send him back to that world where all he had was a freeway that lead to nowhere and his own thoughts reminding him whose fault it was he was there.

And those, those were some of the better options. There were things he wouldn’t let himself consider, thoughts he was afraid to give name to. They could realize who he was. They could go back to that shitty house in L.A., they could find Gabe and use him to draw Robbie out in the open. Or… he could fail. He could go through all this, he could walk through Hell to find her, could stand in a new version of the nightmare that still plagued him and plead with her to come along and she could tell him no. It was something Robbie learned the hard way, something that Eli and his parents and Coulson all taught him in different ways. You could fight for someone with everything you had, could walk through Hell for them, and sometimes it still wasn’t enough to save them. Sometimes, people were just lost.

He wasn’t going to let that be Daisy. That wasn’t how this story ended. Daisy didn’t get to disappear into the world’s worst prison for the crime of helping him. She didn’t get to spend the rest of her life in a cell because Robbie fucked up. He knew a thing or two about one person paying for another’s mistakes, had seen Gabe in a wheelchair because Eli fucked up. It was the Bauers, Eli had insisted, Joe and Lucy, they started this. They lied. And god, Robbie had felt like laughing. Gabe was in a wheelchair, Robbie had died, and Eli was still going on endlessly about his reason for it all. As if it mattered, as if any of that shit made a goddamn difference at the end of the day. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, that was how the saying went. Robbie could vouch for that personally, had seen just how Hellish good intentions could make someone. He’d never meant for this to happen to Daisy, just as his uncle never meant for Robbie and Gabe to be caught up in his shit.

Well, I guess it runs in the family.

Daisy spoke, repeated his words back to him, and the relief was nearly enough to take Robbie off his feet. Sometimes, you didn’t get to save people. Sometimes, you did everything you could, you went to Hell and back, you fought with every part of you, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes. Not today. Today, he at least got her out of the fucking cell. He didn’t know what would happen next, didn’t know how this story ended, but it wouldn’t be with her spending the rest of her life in a manmade Hell because of his mistakes. And maybe the next story ended differently, maybe Robbie couldn’t get away from the things that ran in his family, but for the moment, they were all right. He could recognize a win when he saw one, even if it was a single battle in a war that would go on for years to come.

He huffed a quiet laugh, half genuine humor half leftover relief from the realization that she was coming with him. Shrugging, he offered her a brief nod. “Hey, joke about what you know, right? Murder’s kinda my thing. Seem to remember somebody labeling me a serial killer once.” If you’d told him back then, when Daisy Johnson was just a girl who showed up at his shop talking shit and pissing him off more than anyone else had in a long time that he’d one day walk through literal Hell for just a chance at making sure she was all right, Robbie would have laughed. He would have called you a goddamn idiot, would have done anything but believe you. Back then, the idea of saving her would have seemed insane. Now, the idea of leaving her felt far crazier.

She was taking off the rest of that jacket, and Robbie took a moment to close his eyes. It was an action with two purposes --- assessing the soon-to-be-healed damage to his back and attempting to push the Rider a little further down. The back would be fine. Already he felt the wounds stitching themselves shut, a stark reminder that the Devil wasn’t finished with him yet. His eyes snapped open when Daisy spoke again, noting that familiar anger in her voice. Robbie’d had a talent for pissing her off since the day he met her. Going to Hell hadn’t robbed him of that.

“You really think I get a goddamn say? What, I ask nicely and the Devil’s gonna see my side of things? I say please and he’s gonna give up his gig here and let me go back to drinking him into a fucking corner? I’m not giving up here, Daisy, I’m not telling you to leave my ass behind. I’m giving you a warning. Letting you know what might happen. If it’s up to me, you’re buying me a drink when this shit’s over.” But it wasn’t up to him. Not entirely, not with the Rider pushing and scraping at the edges of his mind. One second, that was all it would take. One second of Robbie letting his guard down, one moment of losing control. He remembered the church his mother used to drag him to in the days before she’d decided parenthood wasn’t for her, remembered the sermons the preacher spat out from the pulpit. Damnation takes just a single slip. He wondered if the man had known just how literal that statement could be.

But, of course, Daisy wouldn’t accept that. She was stubborn and, right now, she was angry. Robbie saw it reflected in her eyes, recognized the storm brewing behind her expression. He knew he was in for an earful… and he was kind of touched. Who else would take time to scream at him in the pits of Hell? Who else cared about him that much?

Her expression shifted suddenly, and Robbie tilted his head to the side, curious as to what might have caused the change. It took him a moment to recognize the screaming. He’d gotten so used to the sound over the last few years, heard it so often that it blended into the background as easily as the sound of his own heartbeat. It had been a constant soundtrack for so long that he forgot not everyone was accustomed to the noise. Turning back, he caught sight of a woman being pulled into the arena, shrugging at Daisy’s question. “That’s where they fight,” he said simply, as if it was obvious. “She looks new. Won’t be fun for her, but that’s not our problem.” He was about to turn back to Daisy, about to tell her they ought to get a move on when he caught sight of another face at the edge of the arena.

Coulson.

Their eyes locked for a moment, Robbie sucking in a breath as the older man held his gaze. His throat was dry, his heart pounding. After a moment, Daisy’s hand on his arm pulled him from the trance and Robbie whirled back around to face her. “This way,” he said quickly, taking her arm and tugging her towards it. “We need to go now. If we can get out of here fast, I can keep the other guy down.” He hoped.

The portal was visible up ahead and Robbie dragged Daisy towards it quickly, wanting to get out before Coulson or the terrified blonde woman or any of the thousand ghosts Hell had to offer could step into their path and slow them down.

DAISY: It was the extreme of the situation that was making the laughter bubble up from Daisy. The fact that of all the people to break her out of the Raft, it was Robbie, and his path back to the city was through hell. Why was she surprised that this was the turn her life would take? But maybe it was a good thing that she could still be surprised. That there was still some crazy left in the world that could sneak up on her. And maybe there was that small blip of hope that reminded Daisy that no one in the future ever mentioned her being imprisoned in the Raft or escaping it – which meant… it meant she had done something differently. And maybe the future she had seen – the one that she had created – it could be avoided.

“I was wrong,” Daisy said. It felt strange to smile after everything that had happened, and to be smiling in hell? Another thing entirely. “And no, I won’t ever say that again, Reyes. So, enjoy it. It’s never happening again.” For a moment, everything felt light, despite the oppressive atmosphere of hell. Maybe that was delirium or hysteria some part of Daisy desperately trying not to think about what they were actually doing here... but she was laughing. For the first time since she was arrested, she was laughing. Catching her breath, she wanted it to stay like this. To stay in this small moment of peace they had found in hell... but this was only the start of the journey. They had to get through hell, literally, and then she’d be faced with a new mountain of problems.

The collar. Being a fugitive. Find a place to stay - Daisy wasn’t going to be able to step back into her life as though nothing had happened. Once again, Daisy had made a series of choices that would turn her life upside down. (And those around her were sucked into this storm as well. Alex, Robbie... Matt.) And to highlight that, Robbie was trying to tell her that he had made a deal with the other guy to make sure she got out. Maybe it was their location that was fueling her anger or that she was reminded once again, she had no control over anything. None. Not who lives, not who dies, and not for what fucking reason. Robbie was willing to trade his life for hers, to make sure she got out (he didn’t get a choice, he claimed, but he had made one when he stepped through hell to reach her, he had a choice, even if he didn’t feel like he did).

Hell seemed to have the same impact on Robbie, he snapped back at her - and Daisy didn’t have the capacity to call him out on any of it. The drinking, the way he was making decisions for her (even unconsciously) - but the last part, she could do that much. But she never had a chance to shove him away and tell him a drink wouldn’t do him any good if he got stuck. Would her admitting to giving a shit about him help - or just give the Rider more leverage over Robbie’s soul? A new way to manipulate the body he borrowed.

(Daisy needed to start keeping a list of things she wished she had said. Moments she let slide right past her. Because she knew she was going to regret not saying anything... but the moment flew past them so fast, Daisy didn’t have time to form words.)

“Do they make everyone fight?”

A question she didn’t want the answer to. Whatever the answer was, it wasn’t like Daisy could do shit about it. Her stomach turned as Trish was pulled away towards the arena - it wasn’t their problem - but watching someone be pulled away to a place where Daisy knew they’d be suffering? Trish was right there but Daisy couldn't do anything to help her. A feeling of uselessness pooling in her stomach as Daisy tried to come to terms with that reality. (She was no hero and Trish wasn’t her problem. If Daisy believed that, this would have been easier.)

“Robbie,” Daisy said his name in a panic, barely nodding her head at his words. As much as she wanted to focus on him, her eyes and her attention had gone back to the figure on the horizon. Coulson. Coulson was in hell. Her mind was already tipping into a downward spiral, but as Robbie pulled her arm, she snapped out of it. (Mostly.) But thankfully, Robbie was aware enough to know what to do. Stable enough to guide her to the exit. With the urgency in his tone, Daisy let her adrenaline and panic move her - and she ran. As fast as she could. Her grip on him changed, her hand finding his - a reminder for herself that he was still there, and her grip tight enough to tell him she wasn’t about to let go.

When they reached the portal, Daisy practically threw herself through it, gasping for breath as she hit the ground. “Robbie - I -” Daisy looked at him, shaking her head. Did you see him too? That was what she wanted to ask, but the words died on her lips. Too scared to know if she was hallucinating or if it had been reality.

Daisy squeezed her eyes shut while she continued to struggle to breathe. Her mind running through all the wisdom she had received over the years. But nothing seemed to fit. So, she focused on the one thing she could control. Forcing everything else down. “Can you get this damn collar off me?”

ROBBIE: It was telling, Robbie often thought, that the Rider had never presented saving people as an option when he was convincing Robbie to make his deal. The Devil didn’t ask him if he wanted to be a superhero. He wasn’t given a choice that involved making the world a better place, wasn’t offered a chance to save people from those like the ones who’d killed Robbie. ”Do you want to punish those who hurt your brother? Do you want to avenge your own death?” There was nothing noble in the offer, nothing heroic. And yet, Robbie’s answer had been the same.

”Yes. More than anything, yes.”

For a long time, Robbie put a curtain up between himself and the demon inside his head. That wasn’t him, he’d swear. He wasn’t the one killing all those people. It was something else, something inside him, something that he couldn’t control. He told himself that over and over again, muttered it every time he left a trail of bodies behind, insisted on it any time someone attempted to hold him responsible for the dead in his wake. It wasn’t Robbie who craved vengeance, wasn’t Robbie who tore people apart. It wasn’t him, it was the Devil. It was Ghost Rider. It was someone else.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t the Rider who killed Santino Noguera in his cell, wasn’t the Rider who was so enraged at the sight of a former gang leader lying on a cot and reading a paperback that he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. It wasn’t the Rider who saw Eli standing across from him and lost all control, wasn’t the Rider who was willing to spend eternity in Hell himself if it meant he could personally deliver the man who’d raised him to the same fate. The Rider craved vengeance, but he hadn’t made Robbie take that deal. He hadn’t made Robbie answer with such desperate want in his tone. The Rider craved vengeance, but he wasn’t the only one.

Gabe had known it. Robbie didn’t think he’d ever forget the disgust on his younger brother’s face when he’d shoved Robbie’s touch away, the way his lips curled up when Robbie insisted that those gangsters got what they deserved for what they’d done to Gabe. Don’t you put their blood on me.

Robbie wasn’t a hero. He’d never once been that. Not before the Rider, and certainly not after. This, breaking into the Raft to save the one person in his life who was still willing to speak to him, this wasn’t heroism. It was selfish. Everything Robbie did, at its core, was selfish. He glanced over to her now, smiling faintly and huffing a laugh that wasn’t entirely genuine. “Yeah, I’ll put it in my memory banks. Take a mental snapshot. I’ll remind you you said it later.” It wasn’t what he meant to say. What he meant to say was, ’You probably weren’t far off.’ She hadn’t been. That initial assessment, the one that labeled him a serial killer, it was harsh but it wasn’t unfair. It wasn’t uncalled for. There was a difference, Robbie knew, between justice and vengeance. He’d never once pretended to fall on the right side of that line.

Daisy was laughing then, and Robbie wasn’t sure if he ought to be relieved or concerned. He’d seen people crack under far less pressure than this, seen Hell break strong willed people into shards of glass too small to hold between your fingers in less time than they’d been standing here now. He wondered if, after all this, she’d be lost anyways. If he’d come all the way here just for her to lose herself on the route home. You could walk through Hell for someone, but sometimes it still wasn’t enough. Some people, you didn’t get to save. Robbie was one of them, he knew. That was part of what had made this decision an easy one. It didn’t matter, in the end, whether or not he got out of Hell today. It didn’t matter if that portal closed before his feet were on the other side, because this was the deal he’d made. This was what was waiting for him when all was said and done. No matter how it ended, no matter how he got there, Robbie Reyes’s story only ever ended in one place. Sometimes, Eli would have said with that crooked grin and those eyes that never stopped laughing, the light at the end of the tunnel is fire and brimstone.

(Had he known back then that that was how his story ended? Had he known Robbie would be the one ending it?)

There was a fire burning all around them, warm and familiar and terrifying, and there was a fire burning inside him just as furiously. He was angry at Daisy for caring enough about him to risk her skin for him again and again, angry at her for being caught, angry at her for wanting a way out for him when all he wanted was for her to be okay. He was angry at her for daring to believe that he deserved more than this. He was angry at her for making him hope, even for a second, that she might be right. .

The anger drained out of him all at once when she spoke, eyes flickering back over to the familiar sight of the arena, the familiar chorus of cheers raising up from within it. Do they make everyone fight? For a heartbeat, that fire was back. It was burning in his eyes, in his chest, in whatever was left of his soul, and he remembered being here without her, remembered the rush of adrenaline, the way he didn’t know which feelings were his and which were the Devil’s, the way he almost didn’t care because as long as he felt something, if didn’t matter where it came from. “No,” he answered at last, jaw tight. “Some people, they don’t have to make.”

Robbie had never been like the blonde woman, fighting and clawing and trying with everything she had to escape her fate. Vengeance or peace? That’s what the deal he’d made boiled down to, in the end. Did he want to die on that dirty street with the world on fire around him, or did he want to live to set those flames himself? Did he want to go to his grave with only his own blood on his hands, or did he want to soak the earth with so much blood that the soil was damp with it? Vengeance or peace? Robbie had made his choice. He still wasn’t sure he regretted it.

(It was the choice Eli made, too. Robbie remembered Lucy Bauer, smiling at him with teeth that had rotted out of her head because Eli killed her, remembered the way she looked at him. ”You’re his nephew. Gabriel. Like the angel.” She’d sneered at him with those rotting teeth, smiled like she knew him, like she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. And Robbie --- Robbie had felt like laughing. ”No,” he’d said, shaking his head. ”I’m the other one.” Not an angel. Never that.)

(Well, I guess it runs in the family.)

She threw herself through the portal like a drowned swimmer desperate for shore, and Robbie stepped out after her with a relief so heavy it nearly knocked him off his feet. The Rider pounded on the wall that separated his consciousness from Robbie’s as his feet touched the earth, but Robbie knew it was too late. The portal closed behind him, and he was on the side that came with his mind in the driver’s seat, the side that meant he’d go to work in the morning and pay his rent on time and buy groceries before the milk in the fridge went bad. (Robbie didn’t know if it was the right side. It was the side he wanted to be on, but it certainly wasn’t the side he deserved.)

His name on her lips again, and he knew what she was thinking. He knew what she wanted to ask. Selfishly, he hoped she wouldn’t. Gabe hated him now. Robbie had known it the moment his brother pulled away from him in that containment module, the moment he said Ghost Rider in a breathless tone that was disappointed and terrified all at once. His brother hated him, his parents walked out on him, and he dragged the only father he’d ever known to Hell and left him to burn. Daisy was all he had, the only person who knew who he was and liked him anyways. And if she asked that question on the tip of her tongue, Robbie would tell her the answer.

And she would hate him for it.

There was a moment, a stuttering, heart-wrenching moment where she stared at him and he stared at her and the end was right there in sight. She would ask the question and he would answer it and she would hate him. He would get every goddamn thing he’d ever deserved, carve out the fate he’d earned for himself.

She shut her eyes and he steeled himself, ready for the world to implode around him, and then it didn’t. She asked another question instead, and Robbie hated himself for the surge of relief that came with it. One day, he knew, that other question would come. One day, she’d ask it and he’d answer her and it would be the end of everything. The world would burn away around him, just as it had on that dingy street where his blood still stained the pavement.

But not today.

“Yeah,” he said, the word coming out in a single quiet breath. “Hold still. We’ll see what we can do.”

[megabadbunny]

No Place Like Hohm (7/8)

***

(Aka the obligatory post-GitF fic, for anyone else who ever wondered what might have taken place between a trip to France and an adventure in a parallel universe. Ten/Rose, all ages, full of angst, fluff, a pinch of romantic bickering, a dash of mutual pining, and a dollop of swashbuckling adventure!)

***

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Chapter 7 | Ch 8

Perhaps later, Mickey thought, he’d have an easier time picking out the discrete parcels of what happened next, establishing some sort of sensible timeline.

(He was, of course, magnificently wrong.)

At the moment, what he knew was this: he was pinned to the ground with the business side of a sharp blade pressed to his throat, until suddenly he wasn’t, and then the crowd went absolutely mad around him, screaming and shouting and stomping their feet until Mickey thought he’d drown in the noise, and what had riled them up like that anyway?, but maybe it didn’t matter because a bunch of those Golden Guards rushed in, and there was lots of shouting amongst the Champions and their captives, and the Guards might have been splitting everyone up or they might have been making everything worse, and there might have been a bit of a scuffle, and Mickey might have punched one of those pratty Guards in the face, which they Very Much Did Not Appreciate, and then he might’ve got a punch-to-the-face of his very own, which might’ve hurt quite badly actually, and now here he was, in some sort of alien infirmary, wondering exactly how he’d come to be in this position, thousands of miles and years away from home, nervously awaiting the decision of a council of humans and horse-people who would determine whether he and his friends deserved a reward or an execution for their impertinence, watching the events of the day play out before him on one of a dozen hi-res screens as he iced a bloody nose.

It was more than a little disconcerting, watching yourself get tackled to the ground. More than that, though, it was a little annoying to watch it while someone poked fun at you in ceaseless mocking commentary.

“All right, but this is my favorite part,” Vareem said gleefully, pointing at the screen as Rose yanked Mickey to the ground to avoid a barrage of dragon-fire. “Look at your face! Your face, Mickey!”

“What was I supposed to do, pout like a supermodel?” Mickey grumped. “That thing was gonna kill me!”

“I didn’t even know faces could make shapes like that!”

Huffing in frustration, Mickey pushed up from the plush bench, pacing round the room for what felt like the hundredth time. Certainly it had to be the hundredth time they’d watched these bloody clips from the stupid Championship, the giant screens in front of them blaring Mickey and Rose and the Doctor’s faces over and over and over again for all in the room to see.

But that, though, that was a thing all its own—it was like ancient Greece out there, how comes it looked like an Apple store exploded in here? It wasn’t just the jaw-droppingly huge television screen, either; it was the gentle music that played from some unseen source, the lights overhead whose color slowly changed with the mood in the room, the curved clear windows that displayed facts and figures and useful tidbits at a mere touch of the glass, the doors that went whoosh in and out of the walls like something out of Star Trek, all of it posh and polished and spotless pristine white. It was almost like the further they got away from the town and the townspeople, the fancier this weird little planet got. It just didn’t make sense. Nor, Mickey thought with a frown, did it make sense that their lot had been tossed in here amongst all the other winners while the City Council decided their fate, instead of being chucked into some sort of alien jail.

If they had access to the TARDIS, Mickey imagined they would have grabbed Dyana and Vareem and hopped out of here lickety-split, but since those Golden Guard blokes had confiscated the TARDIS to whereabouts unknown, that complicated things a bit. At any rate, Mickey supposed he should be grateful, however grudgingly, that the whole instant-death-round thing no longer seemed to be on the table. But there was still time enough for that, he thought glumly.

“How much longer d’you think it’s gonna be?” he asked Dyana. “Feels like it’s been hours.”

“It has been hours,” replied Dyana, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against a pillar. “Not that I’m too keen on them rushing into things. Don’t really want to become someone’s property any sooner than I have to, thanks.”

“Nah, it won’t come to that. The Doctor will talk some sense into the Council, if nothing else.”

Dyana offered a wistful smile. “That would be nice. Wouldn’t get your hopes up, though.”

“Trust me, he’s got a talent for it. Only took him six words to uproot our entire government back home.”

“Sure it did,” teased Vareem.

“It sure did!” Mickey replied. “I wasn’t exaggerating. Just six words, and he toppled the whole thing. Poof! Done and done.”

Vareem frowned. “That’s sort of terrifying.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Well, I reckon it’s not so great for Harriet. And probably not for the people who work for her. And probably it’s causing some problems in the long run,” said Mickey thoughtfully. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Point is, he takes care of things. That’s what he does. And sometimes Rose ‘n me, we help. Isn’t that right, Rose?”

Rose did not reply, lost in thought as she sat still on a fluffy white hospital bench, staring at nothingness like it wronged her. A flash of silver peeked from her wrist and upper arm, two of several high-tech mesh bandages peppering Rose’s body, slapped here and there over bruises and cuts. The bandages were good stuff, futuristic high-tech mesh infused with something that would greatly expedite the healing process, or at least that was what Mickey had garnered from the physician’s explanation—the physician, not the Doctor, because he’d waltzed off the moment they’d arrived. Strange, that; Mickey would have expected the Doctor to insist on tending Rose’s wounds himself, or at least he’d hover over the physician while they did it and drive them batty explaining everything they were doing wrong. But no, he’d vanished almost immediately. Mickey wondered why.

A flurry of raised voices erupted from the monitors, pulling Rose’s attention and Mickey’s, too. They both watched as an onscreen Doctor and Rose bickered heatedly. Mickey had every intention of teasing Rose about it, but stopped upon glancing back at her; her gaze sharpened into a glare, her mouth tightening at the sight of the Doctor onscreen, tiny and digital and utterly confused, and oh dear, but this would be a very bad time for teasing, wouldn’t it?

Mickey’s brow furrowed in concern. “Rose?”

Wordlessly, she pushed up from the bench and stalked out of the room.

 **

 “All right,” Rose said impatiently, pushing aside the privacy screen—didn’t matter how he might try to hide, she’d recognize the telltale whir and buzz of the sonic screwdriver anywhere. “We can’t keep dancing around this, Doctor. We’ve got to—”

The Doctor’s gaze snapped up to hers, eyes wide in alarm, but that wasn’t what killed Rose’s words, left her breathless, nor was it the sight of him shirtless and exposed, though that was certainly unusual in its own right. No, it was the bandages, dozens and dozens of them. Some of them were wrapped round his arms, others pasted on his shoulders, others still slapped on his flanks, curled around his ribs and peeking round from the back; stepping to the side, Rose could see even more bandages slathered along his spine. What few patches of skin left uncovered by the bandages were dotted with little pink cuts and bluish-yellow bruises and angry purple welts, a perverse sort of rainbow playing out across his skin.

Bruises and cuts and wounds, a whole tapestry of hurt, and—and how long had he been wearing those special healing bandages, now? They’d been waiting here for hours, hours, and the bandages had already helped Rose and the others so much—so why did it look like the Doctor had fought and lost a round with a heavyweight champion? Or were the original wounds just that bad? When had he even gotten those wounds?

Had he been hurting this entire time, and Rose just hadn’t noticed, somehow?

“God,” she breathed, aghast. She reached out to touch him, but drew back at the very last second. She didn’t want to put pressure anywhere he hurt. “What is all this? What happened?”

“Erm, like you said earlier, average line-of-duty stuff,” said the Doctor just a little too quickly, avoiding Rose’s gaze. He continued his work with the sonic, scanning something in his hand--that pet-chip-thing, by the looks of it--and he frowned. “Just a couple of action hero wounds. Normal stuff. Standard. Run-of-the-mill, even. Nothing a couple of Beznisian battle-bandages can’t cure—and isn’t that funny, that they’ve got battle-bandages here? Definitely unexpected, considering the technology outside these walls doesn’t appear to have advanced much past the Middle Ages, but then, I suppose we’ve encountered stranger and more out-of-place things, haven’t we?”

Rose swallowed against the suspicion bubbling up sickly in her stomach. “Doctor, how’d you get hurt?”

“I just told you,” said the Doctor, pocketing the sonic and the pet-chip. “Standard stuff. Nothing worth discussing. Certainly nothing worth worrying about.” He stood up, grabbing his shirts from where he’d discarded them and pulling the tee-shirt over his head, only wincing a little as he did so. “Now, they did offer me some acetylsalicylic acid to help with the discomfort, and that actually is worth worrying about, because you know what they say about Time Lords and acetylsalicylic acid: they don’t mix. Or rather, they shouldn’t. They occasionally do. But that’s why you always have a handy spare bar of chocolate on hand!” He pulled on his oxford and hastily buttoned every other button. “There’s a bit of advice for you: Always keep spare chocolate around, Rose Tyler; you never know when you might need a good source of simple trigclycerides.

“Anyhoo, now that we’ve all had a chance to rest and recover a bit, I rather think it’s time to get going, don’t you? Shall we collect Mr. Mickey and the TARDIS and call it a day?”

“Doctor…”

“Speaking of chocolate, it’s probably time we restocked, or added to the current stock, as it were. You can never have too much chocolate, you know. It’s demonstrably proven to be the one thing in the universe you can never have too-much-of—”

“Doctor, please,” Rose interrupted, firmer this time. “Would you just—”

“Finish saving the day, first? Yes, of course,” said the Doctor. He grabbed his suit jacket and pulled it on. “Give a good speech, give a good glare, give the baddies a good what-for, don’t you reckon?” He whipped his coat about his shoulders with only the tiniest of grimaces. “Oh, and good job on recognizing what the pet-chip-thing was, by the way. It gave me a couple ideas, so I scanned and poked around a bit and I think it might end up being rather important after all. But isn’t that always nice, when something so small actually ends up being rather big in the grand scheme of things? Always a fun revelation, never a dull moment there.

“All right, shall we?” he asked, setting off before Rose had a chance to answer.

She hung back for a moment, hesitating. Even if she didn’t recall every moment of the adventure today—which she did, in startling detail—the footage playing on the screens overhead, over and over and over again, would have reminded Rose that there was no rational explanation of how the Doctor had sustained those wounds. There was no moment when he would have received them, no time he could have received them, and there was certainly no reason. Except as she watched the scene playing out onscreen, following the progress of her tiny digital self as she struggled to steer a sickly-glowing dragon, and it disappeared behind the mountainside in a hail of fire and a thunderous boom that shook the speakers around her, Rose realized that there was, in fact, a moment when the Doctor could have been hurt, and moreover, there was certainly a reason.

(And the screen flooded black with smoke, and Rose remembered awakening, groggy and sore but relatively unhurt despite everything, and what had happened to the dragon, and where was the Doctor, and was he hurt, and later, Mickey couldn’t believe she’d survived, and how…?)

Worrying her lip between her teeth, Rose followed after him.

 **

 The Doctor, Dyana thought with a sick-clenching throat, was going to get them all killed.

(It was not surprising that the guard had no inclination to bring the Doctor and co. before City Council; what was surprising was how easily the Doctor managed to convince them otherwise, and how suddenly, in a matter of seconds it seemed, the group was bursting through the Council doors.)

“About time,” Mickey muttered under his breath, but everyone else stayed quiet as their Golden Guardsman guide typed a series of characters into the keypad next to the chamber door. Dyana couldn’t guess what held Rose or the Doctor’s tongue, but a look over at Vareem let her know that Vareem, too, was likely clenching her teeth against the urge to vomit, fighting all of the instincts screaming at her to run, run, run while she had the chance, that they were both silent for the same reason:

This was it, for them.

Their entire lives had been building up to this single event, this single conversation, this one moment, a slice of time dangling their futures precariously over the knife-sharp edge of a narrow precipice. After this handful of moments, one way or the other--whether they were punished for their insolence, executed for their crimes, or maybe, just maybe, pardoned and offered freedom--their lives would forever change.

The robotic chime of the keypad sliced through the silence, paving the way for the heavy groan of the doors as they swung inward, revealing, bit-by-bit, the darkened chambers within. The second the doors parted enough, the Doctor surged on ahead, Rose and Mickey following immediately after; Dyana and Vareem hung back, frozen in uncertainty and fear. It was all good and well for Rose and her blokes to forge ahead without a second thought, but they didn’t know the Council like everyone on Hohm did. They didn’t know enough to be afraid.

(For all her plans of rebellion, Dyana had never imagined she’d meet the Council in the flesh--she had hoped to escape the Championship with her freedom intact, or die trying. Never had it crossed her mind that fate would bring her here, face-to-face with her planet’s own personal devils, confronting the pieces of filth responsible for so much death and destruction. The very same monsters who had sanctioned the her sister’s murder.)

Dyana closed her eyes against the memory that fought its way to the surface, her fists clenching in anger. She forced herself to drink in a deep, calming breath. It didn’t matter how terrified she was. She would do what she could with this chance--a chance her sister never got.

Swallowing hard, she grabbed Vareem’s hand, squeezing it; Vareem squeezed back, as if in thanks. Dyana led them both in.

Blinking against the dark, Dyana waited for her eyes to adjust as the Councilors murmured in response, and she grimaced at what she saw. It was about what she’d expected, a mixture of old money and new tech, marble pillars and velvet curtains blossoming out of the semi-darkness amidst softly glowing lights and screens. A grand table spread out before them, a great polished wooden thing that cost more than Dyana’s family could earn in an entire generation; behind it, gilded in the finest golds and silks and gems and slim electronic accoutrements the surrounding systems had to offer, sat a half-dozen humans and horse-people, gazing down imperiously.

The Council. Dyana felt Vareem shudder next to her.

Rose glanced back at the two of them and offered an encouraging smile; Dyana knew she was telling them, without words, the same things Mickey had said earlier. The Doctor will help fix everything. It’ll all work out in the end.

Gods, Dyana hoped they were right.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded one of the Councilors.

“Six hours and fourteen minutes,” the Doctor announced as he strode confidently forward. “And eleven seconds, in case you were wondering.”

The Council stared down at the group, each of them distinctly unimpressed. “Guard, we did not send for these offenders. Why have you brought them before us?”

“And counting,” continued the Doctor, consulting his wrist as if he wore a timepiece there--which, he didn’t. “That’s more enough time to collect the facts and render a decision, wouldn’t you say?”

“We would not,” said another Councilor. “We have not yet decided your fate.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about your decision,” the Doctor replied cheerfully. “I’m talking about mine.”

The Council stared down at them, unimpressed. “Guard, remove the offenders,” ordered the Prime Councilor, “and report to your superior for suitable punishment.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the Doctor, waving his hand dismissively before the guard could reply. “In fact, here in a few moments, none of this--” he continued, gesturing to the room around him, “--will be necessary, because here in a few moments, none of this will be in operation. See--”

Flashing the Council a cheeky grin, the Doctor rummaged around in his pockets, presenting a slim black wallet that he flipped open, displaying its contents for all to see. Normally Dyana might have delighted in seeing all of these stuffy upper-crusts breaking out of their dusty indifference, some of them stiffening in alarm at the sight of the wallet while others grew pale, but she didn’t understand--when the wallet flashed her way, all she saw inside was a small white paper that simply read: Trust me :D.

She and Vareem glanced at each other in confusion, then turned to Rose, a question half-formed on their lips. Rose shot them a little wink.

“See, things are about to change around here,” said the Doctor, absolutely beaming with mischief.

Even the Prime Councilor seemed surprised at what she saw in the wallet--which, Dyana could only imagine, must have differed wildly from what she and Vareem each saw, somehow. “I see,” the Prime Councilor murmured. Her gaze switched back to the Doctor, her mouth pressed into a thin smile. “My apologies, High Commander. We were unaware the Shadow Proclamation had chosen to honor us with their presence today. Were we not?” she asked, glancing at her fellow Councilors, as if perhaps one of them had invited a guest to the party without her permission. Dyana wondered if any of the lower Councilors would end the day without a head attached to their neck.

“Had we known a member of the Proclamation would deign to enter our humble competition, we would have proceeded quite differently,” said the Prime Councilor. “Forgive us, High Commander. You and your party are, of course, free to leave, winnings and usual fees fully intact, and we will deliver your ship promptly.”

“Excellent, most excellent. And after that, you’ll dismantle the Championship, lift your technology ban, and all of you will resign from office, effective immediately.”

The Council broke out in a murmur, but the Prime Councilor simply glared at the Doctor, her smile tightening unpleasantly. “We beg your pardon?”

“Which you most certainly will not receive,” replied the Doctor. “I’m not interested in winnings or usual fees, whatever they might be--”

“Sounds an awful lot like bribes,” muttered Rose darkly.

“--which, I suppose, sort of makes me your worst nightmare, doesn’t it?” the Doctor laughed. “After all, you must have had great success bribing anyone who came before me, mustn’t you? It’s the only thing that makes sense with all of the statutes-violations and felonies bloodying up your ledger. No way you’d have been permitted to run things so poorly for so long, otherwise.”

The Prime Councilor drew back, eyes flashing. “High Commander, those are very serious allegations, none of which, I assure you, you have any evidence to support.”

“So you’re not forcing people into your stupid little knockoff Olympics, then?” Mickey demanded.

“Or promoting the use of kidnapping and date-rape drugs?” added Rose.

“Or denying us access to vital and sometimes life-saving technology?” blurted out Vareem.

“Our people have been denied nothing,” the Prime Councilor said sharply. “The Honorable Council ensures that the people of Hohm do not descend into anarchy and chaos. We are not your mothers and fathers; it is not our place to award trinkets and treats. We cannot be blamed for those of you who have not earned your way.”

“And what about giving us away as bloody prizes, huh?” Dyana spat out before she could stop herself. “What about pawning us off on a bunch of rich off-worlders, just moving us like we’re so much rubbish? You gonna tell us you don’t do that, either?”

The Prime Councilor turned Dyana’s way. Dyana forced herself to hold the woman’s gaze even as she shuddered at the cold.

“Certainly the Honorable Council would never do such a thing,” replied the Prime Councilor. “But should any member of our population choose to volunteer themselves as bride-prizes in the Championship, we will not stop them; your lives are your own, to do with as you choose.”

“Horse shit,” Dyana tried to say, but her words were trampled by the Prime Councilor’s continued insistence that “Freedom, on Hohm, is valued above all things, even the freedom to devote oneself as a winning token. We cannot strip our people of their liberty to make such decisions, however inadvisable they may seem to others. We will not deprive our people of the right to choose.”

“Except we don’t choose at all,” Dyana argued. “Your Champions choose for us.”

“And is it not a great honor to be chosen by one of our Champions? For our Champions to pay a generous price in your name, to fight and compete and strive for your hand?”

“No!” shouted Dyana. “We don’t want that--you know we don’t want that!”

“Save your breath, Dyana,” said Vareem, pulling her back with a gentle hand on her arm. “It’s not like they can hear you over their jangling purses, anyway.”

Dyana managed not to pull out of Vareem’s grasp, but only just barely, and only because she was surprised at Vareem’s candor in front of the Councilor. She didn’t think Vareem felt so strongly about all of this. She’d never been happier to be wrong.

“It is unfortunately true that few things speak louder than money,” the Doctor agreed. “Which, I suspect, is why most of your Champions, especially the wealthy offworlders, pay such a hefty fee to enter the Championship. Does that sound about right?” he asked Dyana and Vareem. “Forgive me if I’m wrong; it’s just a hunch, as Mr. Smith and I didn’t exactly enter the competition via the usual circumstances, sort of bypassed the whole exchanging-of-money bit.”

“You’re not wrong,” Dyana replied. “They call it an entry fee or a fee to participate, but everyone knows what it really is. They put out a call to everyone in the surrounding systems, and anyone with money can pay a fortune to come here and either compete for a wife or watch the blood spilling from the stands. We’re out there risking our lives, stripped of our freedom, and rich offworlders just sit there and watch it like it’s bloody theatre.”

“All while the Council sits up here with their silks and their gold and they watch everything from behind their pristine screens,” Vareem spat.

“And they don’t even allow us to own so much as a telecommunications device.”

“Of course they don’t,” scoffed Vareem. “Otherwise they know we’d band together and stop them getting rich off violence and selling us as slaves!”

“We’re Hohm’s greatest export,” Dyana said bitterly.

“As I said,” the Prime Councilor replied, her voice as smooth and cool as the marble surrounding them, “you have no evidence to support your claims. Nor, I assure you, will you find any.”

“You know, on some level that may be true,” the Doctor admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “On the other hand, I’m certain there are scores upon scores of native Hohmish citizens who would loudly object to their mistreatment at your hands, if given the opportunity to do so--is that an accurate presumption, Dyana? Vareem?”

“Yes,” Vareem nodded, as Dyana muttered a sharp, “Very.”

“Although, if pressed by the Proclamation, I’m certain you would do your utmost to convince your citizens into stating otherwise,” the Doctor continued, to the Prime Councilor, “via your usual methods of coercion, pressure, threats, violence, et cetera et cetera. There’s the video footage of the Championship, of course, but certainly that could be easily erased, if it hasn’t been already. And unfortunately an official investigation into your many (many) sentient-beings’-rights violations could take weeks, months, possibly years, even if we did have physical, tangible evidence at our disposal. Sadly, folks like Dyana and Vareem don’t have that sort of time.

“You know what they do have, though?” the Doctor asked, and here his smile grew downright manic. “They have us,” he said, gesturing to Rose, Mickey, and himself. “And one of us has some of your oft-requested evidence conveniently hiding right in his pockets.”

He withdrew something from his coat-pocket, a small, rectangular silver thing with a series of numbers stamped across its face, and tossed it onto the table before the Prime Councilor. It clattered over the wood and slid to a stop beneath the Prime Councilor’s nose; unmoving, she peered down at it, lip curled in a disgusted sneer. “What is this?” she asked.

“That, my dear Prime Councilor, is an identifying integrated circuit, also known as a passive integrated transponder tag, outfitted with the very latest in local radio frequency identification and remote control technology; in short, as my brilliant friend here just happened to notice, it’s a pet chip,” the Doctor explained. “But Doctor, whatever are you doing with a loose pet chip floating about your considerable pockets? you might ask. Why, I’ve got a loose pet chip floating around my considerable pockets because I found it in the arena after the oh-so-mysterious explosion of a dragon, and it has yielded a surprising amount of helpful information, I would answer. In fact, I would go on to say, a scan of this particular pet chip just so happens to inform me that its original  host was a squamata basilisk draconus, a species that is massively illegal to be imported, purchased, or otherwise owned in this quadrant of the universe due to its status as an endangered species.”

“You want to shut us down because of illegal animal ownership?” asked one of the Councilors, amused.

“No, I want to shut you down because you’re denying your people access to things they want and need purely in the name of control, you’re turning a profit off violence, you’re running a thriving slave trade, and you’re dabbling in illegal pet ownership,” the Doctor replied. “Oh, and the fact that you murdered a endangered animal in cold blood. Can’t overlook that.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the Council, but the Prime Councilor did not flinch. “Once again, I must assert that you have no evidence to support your claim--”

“Ah, but I do! It’s right there on the chip. It’s oh-so-helpful and absolutely packed with information. For example, it tells me who engineered the dragon, and when, and where, and why, and most importantly, for whom. And that whom is you!”

The Prime Councilor glared at him. “The Honorable Council would never--”

“Now, admittedly the chip doesn’t tell me how or why you inserted a remote detonation device into your pet dragon, but it doesn’t have to; anyone with a working brain can tell you that,” the Doctor breezed on as if the Prime Councilor had never spoken. “You, being fully aware of this creature’s status as an endangered (and therefore protected) species, asked the engineers of this specimen to implant a remote detonation device in case something happened and you needed to take dramatic action very, very quickly--say, for example, a devastatingly handsome agent from the Shadow Proclamation just happened to drop by unannounced, or a pair of disgruntled Championship participants stole your dragon for a joy ride and flew a little too close to the sun, figuratively speaking, and you lot got nervous. All you needed to do was press a little button, and boom goes the dragon.”

He leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “Unfortunately for you, the dragon might have gone boom, but that pet chip? It’s made out of none other than some of your very own Hohmish ore, and that stuff is nigh indestructible. The chip survived totally intact, with all your damning evidence written right across its face. Really, you should have made your money exporting your ore instead of your citizens, but you know what they say: hindsight’s 20/20, though there’s no time like the present to start sporting a pair of spectacles.

“Anyhoo, I may not have physical proof that you’re violating your people’s rights, but I have plenty of physical proof to charge you with multiple counts of violations of Proclamation Article 72.3 subsection 17-B, being the illicit breeding and destruction of an endangered, protected species,” said the Doctor, his hands clasped behind his back like an office manager delivering an only-mildly-unpleasant presentation to his wayward employees. “My report is on its way to my superiors right now, with the full details. Once they receive it, and find you guilty of your charges--which, make no mistake, they certainly will; dragon-breeders are notorious for turning on their clientele, no confidentiality amongst thieves I’m afraid--you’ll be stripped of your titles, fined of all your wealth, and thrown into a Proclamation prison for a minimum of ten years.”

A self-indulgent little laugh escaped his lips. “And once you’re locked away in prison, it’s only a matter of time before your other crimes are uncovered. After all, with you lot in the brig, who’s going to intimidate your citizens into silence for you?”

Finally, the Prime Councilor had the decency to look nervous, and inwardly, Dyana rejoiced.

“We could kill you where you stand,” the Prime Councilor said, her words slicing the air like shards of ice.

“Could do, but it wouldn’t stop the report from going through,” the Doctor replied. “It’s already on its way. No one can stop it going through, except me.”

Councilors whispered nervously amongst themselves in a low susurrus of mounting desperation. “What do you want?” the Prime Councilor asked the Doctor.

“Ooh, is that another veiled reference to a bribe? How exciting. It just so happens that what I desire is for you--all of you--to resign from your posts, effective immediately.”

“You can’t be serious,” one of the Councilors balked.

The Doctor laughed. “Of course I can! In fact, for every time you argue with me, or say any other silly or inane thing, I’ll add another punishment to the list. This time, you get to donate seventy-five percent of your total net worth to your citizenry.” He grinned beatifically. “Would you like to argue some more?”

“Please, be reasonable,” protested another Councilor, and the Doctor just chuckled in response. “And now I’m banning you from the planet Hohm altogether,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, you’re off the planet. All of you. It’s that, or prison for a decade.”

His grin grew sharp. “A decade, if you’re lucky.”

This time no one dared argue with him; the only response the Doctor received was a bunch of open-mouthed, disbelieving stares.

“Uh-oh, hear that?” asked the Doctor, pointing to the imaginary timepiece on his wrist. “Sounds like it’s make-a-decision-already o’clock.”

“You would really break our world like this?” asked the Prime Councilor. “Break our foundations, shatter our economy, leave our people leaderless and wandering?”

“I’m sure your new Councilors-in-interim will smooth things along nicely.”

“There are no other Councilors. We have not chosen successors.”

“Nor would any reasonable person permit you to. I am referring, of course, to Dyana and Vareem,” the Doctor replied, brow quirked in amusement, as if the Prime Councilor was terribly stupid. “Both excellent candidates for Councilor-ship. That is, if they’d like the job?”

All eyes turned to Vareem and Dyana, and Dyana’s throat ran dry. She had strode into the arena fully expecting to escape, or die trying. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined any of this would happen. Never had she dared hope that she would help make it happen! And now, this bright, shining gift sat just before her, the chance to help guide her world into the future, to make things better for everyone, to give every person on Hohm the choices they needed, the choices they deserved…

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She wished her sister had lived to see this. She would have been so, so proud.

“Yes,” Dyana whispered, warmth blossoming from her cheeks to her fingertips to her toes, bringing joy and hope and relief flooding with it. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Me too,” added Vareem, nodding emphatically.

The Doctor beamed at them. “Wonderful. You’ll both do brilliantly. I’m certain of it.”

He turned back to the Council, clapping his hands together in anticipation. “All right! You’ve got a choice before you, which quite frankly in rather generous considering the choices you’ve robbed your people of over the years; you can voluntarily resign, leaving behind most of your fortunate and all of your privilege and prestige, but living otherwise modest lives somewhere far, far away from the people you’ve hurt, or, my report goes through, my superior officers at the Shadow Proclamation get a nice little arrest warrant handy, and the swift hammer of justice strikes fast, hard, and without mercy.”

His smirk was one of the smuggest things Dyana had ever seen, as if he knew the answer even before asking, but wanted to savor the satisfaction of it, anyway. “So,” said the Doctor. “Which’ll it be?”

 ***

 Rose was willing to bet the Councilors had never made a decision so quickly in all their pampered lives.

“How are you doing?” she asked in a low voice, sidling up to Dyana as they watched the Council exiting their chambers, some of them leaving with heads held high and proud while others slunk away like perhaps, if they tried hard enough, they might disappear into the shadows before anyone caught them. “You gonna be all right?”

Dyana shrugged, eyes wide. “I think so? I don’t know. I never expected anything like this to happen. I think I’m sort of in shock, actually.”

Chuckling, she shook her head. “Kind of funny, though--they’ve been so horrible, for so long, made such a huge mess and made things so bad for so many people--only to be brought down by something so small.”

“Ah, I sort of love it when that happens. Poetic justice.”

Dyana shifted, shooting Rose a glance full of suspicion. “And you deliver that sort of thing often, then? The poetic justice?”

“We’ve been known to,” said Rose with a smile.

“As agents of the Shadow Proclamation.”

“But of course,” replied Rose, tapping the side of her nose knowingly, and the two of them laughed.

They both fell quiet as a pair of Golden Guards wheeled in the TARDIS from its hiding spot somewhere in confiscation-land, watching as Vareem poked about the ship in confusion and Mickey excitedly explained it to her. The Doctor was oddly quiet as he looked on, patting the TARDIS doors in greeting, like the arm of an old friend.

“Wouldn’t have mistaken any of you for the authoritarian type,” Dyana said thoughtfully. “Doesn’t really seem like any of you care too much for any sort of rules.”

As if he could sense her watching, the Doctor glanced Rose’s way. Their gazes locked. His expression was neutral, perfectly inscrutable. But something about it twisted in Rose’s gut anyway.

“But then again I didn’t think the Doctor’s paper-thing said anything important, so, I dunno,” Dyana continued. “I guess looks can be pretty deceiving, huh?”

The Doctor ducked into the TARDIS, breaking their gaze. Rose frowned.

“Yeah,” she murmured, worrying her lip between her teeth. “I guess so.”

 **

 “Okay, look. I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Rose called out, closing the TARDIS doors quietly behind her. “Not really, not in any way that actually means anything. And that’s fine. You don’t have to talk. Just listen.”

Surprised, the Doctor looked up from the console, watching wordlessly as Rose fidgeted in place. God, why was this so difficult?

She swallowed, loudly. “You hurt me,” she said. “Back on that spaceship. Back in France. You said things and you did things that hurt me.”

Before the Doctor had a chance to reply, Rose shook her head, rushing along with, “Maybe you didn’t mean to, maybe you didn’t think about it that way. Maybe you didn’t think about it at all. And I mean, I guess that matters, at least a little. But when you share your life with someone--because that’s what we’re doing, Doctor, we’re sharing our lives right now, that’s what’s happening whether you want to call it that or not--when you share your life with someone, you have to think about how your actions affect others. You have to.”

The Doctor didn’t reply, just kept watching her, his brow knit in concentration, or maybe concern.

“I know you’re hurt because of me,” Rose said, her voice quiet. “Because you protected me. That’s what happened, yeah? I don’t remember, and it was too dark and smoky to make it out on the screens back there--but you kept me safe when we were falling. Right? Cos I don’t have barely a scratch on me, but you look beat to hell under all those layers. So you must’ve protected me, put your arms around me and broken the fall, somehow. You must have done.”

Now the Doctor couldn’t meet her gaze, scratching his neck uncomfortably as he looked away.

“I wanted to say thank you for that,” Rose said, forcing her words to stay clear and strong, not to shake the way they wanted to. “I’d probably be dead if it weren’t for you. Honestly, I’d probably be dead several times over if it wasn’t for you. Of course, the same is probably true in reverse. But that’s what we’re both there for, yeah? To watch out for each other, keep each other company, keep each other safe. To trust each other.”

Drawing a deep breath, Rose closed her eyes. “What you did a few days back--leaving us behind on the spaceship, kissing Reinette and bragging about it after--that was a violation of trust,” she said, her cheeks flushing red-hot with embarrassment. “Whether or not you meant it that way. It was--it felt like a betrayal.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him; big mistake. He was staring into the distance, mouth tight, jaw taut, fingers clenched round the edge of the control desk. To an outsider, it might have appeared that he was fighting not to be angry at Rose; Rose knew him well enough to suspect he was trying not to show his anger with himself. The thought broke Rose’s heart.

She kept going.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,” she said, carefully. “But you need to know how it felt to me.”

Silently, the Doctor issued a curt nod.

Rose suppressed a sigh. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she felt disappointed, somehow. Although really, she’d given him the option not to speak, so maybe she shouldn’t be surprised he was taking her up on the offer. Still, she’d hoped…

But that didn’t matter. She’d said her piece and he’d heard it, and acknowledged it, at least a little bit. That was worth something, right?

Rose turned to leave, to give the Doctor some space, but stopped in her tracks at the sound of him clearing his throat.

“Rose?”

She turned back to look at him, her heart convulsing painfully in her chest, so hard she thought her ribs might crack from it. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, slowly. “What I did--it was a betrayal.”

Now Rose’s pulse was hammering in her ears. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

The Doctor’s gaze met hers. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Relief flooded Rose like waters through a broken dam. Before her brain had a chance to make any choice in the matter, her feet had carried her across the console room, up the stairs, and launched her straight into the Doctor, her arms wrapping snugly round him, purely of their own volition, she was sure. She squeezed him tight in a reassuring hug and he responded in kind, embracing her in a way that felt only a little bit desperate. Rose buried her face against his shirt and let out a long, pent-up sigh of release.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, her voice muffled by his shirt.

The Doctor did not reply, but hugged her harder instead.

***

Previous | Next

***

note: once again, as much as i wish i had come up with it all on my own, the conversation about semantics re: betrayal is heavily (heavily!) inspired by some writings from my good friend, the insanely talented @ksgsworld , who is super amazeballs <3

[myhauntedsalem]

The Birdman of Alcatraz

Robert Stroud’s life story was first told in a book in 1955 and then in a movie starring Burt Lancaster in 1962 both entitled “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Both portrayed his life story while he served time for murder first at Leavenworth and then later at Alcatraz. Both portrayed him as a ‘kindly’ reformed prisoner who spent years studying bird diseases and how to cure them. But as usual this Hollywood glossy version reflected only small parts of the real truth.

Robert Stroud was far from a ‘model’ prisoner.

In 1909 Stroud shot and killed a man in Juneau, Alaska. Stroud pimped for a prostitute who was cheated by a “john”. This “john” had paid her $2.00 instead of the expected $10.00. Stroud angry, because he didn’t get his usual cut, went to this man’s residence and shot him five times and then took his wallet. He was tried and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to serve twelve years at McNeil Island prison in Washington State.

Two years later at McNeil Island he stabbed a fellow inmate for being a ‘snitch’. He was tried for assault and six months were tacked on to his sentence. During this time he also viciously attacked a prison hospital orderly. This man had reported him for using intimidation and threats in an attempt to procure narcotics. In 1912 he was transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas—due partially to his ceaseless threats to other inmates.

At Leavenworth, in the spring of 1916 Stroud refused to give a guard his “number’’ which was a minor infraction. The next day a long awaited visit with his brother was cancelled because of this infraction. Stroud during the noon meal that same day in the prison mess hall asked this guard if he had reported him. When the guard refused to respond, Stroud pulled out a concealed knife and stabbed and killed him in front of hundreds of other inmates.

For this crime, he was convicted of first-degree murder. He was to be hanged in 1918. But his mother who had moved to Kansas to be close to him, desperately pleaded for his life. In 1920 President Woodrow Wilson commuted his death sentence to life in prison. The Leavenworth warden because of Stroud’s unpredictable and violent outbursts ordered that he be permanently placed in a segregation unit.

Stroud was an enigma because he had an IQ of 134, but he ate with his fingers, hunched over like an animal. His horrible personal hygiene presented a problem for fellow inmates and prison officials alike. It wasn’t until 1934 that he was formally diagnosed as a psychopath.

While at Leavenworth, he found an injured sparrow in the yard; he took it back to his cell and nursed it back to health. This started his interest in birds. This interest was his one and only redeeming feature.

The warden at Leavenworth used Stroud’s interest in birds to present a model of “progressive rehabilitation” to the public. Shroud played along because he had found a way to raise some money for his mother who was fighting for his release.

Over the next years he raised over 300 canaries, which he sold to visitors at the prison. Stroud’s scientific observations of the canaries he kept did later benefit the research on the canary species. He wrote two books on this subject. He also made a contribution to avian pathology. All of this endeared him to people in the field.

In contrast to this he allowed his birds to fly freely in his cell, which resulted in quite a mess, which he never cleaned up. The massive correspondence he began to receive also became a burden for the prison for each letter coming in and going out had to be screened—a full-time secretary had to be hired just for this purpose.

Prison officials finally fed up with Stroud’s bird business tried to shut him down. He had Delle Mae Jones, a bird researcher in Indiana, which he had corresponded with alert the newspapers and start a petition drive. A 50,000-signature petition was sent to the President. This worked for the prison even gave Stroud an adjourning cell for his birds and his research.

Jones became so close to Stroud; she moved to Kansas and formed a business in 1931 with him where they sold his bird medicines under the name “Stroud’s Specific.” It was widely debated at the time if these remedies were actually effective.

In 1933 Stroud discovered that there were plans to move him to Alcatraz, he knew he would no longer be permitted to keep birds. Stroud however discovered a Kansas law that forbade the transfer of prisoners if they were married in Kansas. He arranged to marry Delle Mae Jones by proxy, which infuriated the prison officials, who would not let him correspond with his new wife.

The first irony here was Stroud was a violent prisoner —this is one reason that the prison officials kept him from the general prison population.

The second irony was Stroud lost his business and birds when it was discovered that some of the equipment he had requested for his lab he had actually used to build a homemade alcohol still.

The third irony is his mother didn’t like Delle—she believed all women were bad for her son. Where once she had been a strong advocate for him, helping with legal battles etc., she now argued against her son’s application for parole, in fact, she became a major obstacle in his attempts to be released. She moved away from Leavenworth and had no further contact with him.

Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz in December of 1942. When he was transferred this note was placed upon the warden’s notebook page with his mug shot. Reason for transfer:

“In view of this man’s homicidal traits and impulsivity dangerous tendencies, he cannot be released in the general population…they feel that it would be possible to confine this man safely at Alcatraz…also wishes to call attention to need for eliminating the insanitary condition…from this man’s bird breeding activities here…Recommend transfer to Alcatraz.”

At Alcatraz, Stroud spent six years in segregation where he did have some contact with other prisoners, but as things worsened he was placed in solitary confinement in an isolated area of the hospital wing for the last eleven years he was at Alcatraz.

This double cell had no toilet so Stroud used a bedpan. One priest who visited the prison stated he went out of his way to avoid being seen as he passed Stroud’s prison door—even going as far as to duck down. He stated if Stroud spotted him he would endlessly babble on and on.

Stroud having access to the prison library began studying law. He petitioned the government stating that his long prison term amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment”.

Another contrast—Stroud was a fan of child pornography. He received many letters from people who were fans of his bird knowledge. Some of these fans were children. Prison officials confiscated a few letters from Stroud in response to these children that contained suggestive remarks.

In 1959, Stroud in poor health was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. In 1963 he died at the age of 73, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

To this day Alcatraz, a very haunted place, has one cell that is more active than all the rest—this is the double cell that Stroud lived in for eleven years in solitary confinement. Full-body apparitions are spotted in this area.

So Robert Stroud was a cold-blooded killer, but the general public because of the book and film “Birdman of Alcatraz” had a totally different picture of him. I remember seeing this film as a child myself and thinking how cruel it was they never released him. The public in general felt the same because after the release of this film, which Burt Lancaster won an Oscar for best actor, many people protested for the release of Robert Stroud.

One fellow prison inmate who heard about the public outcry for Stroud’s release stated: “They want Burt Lancaster to be set free not Robert Stroud.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

I know personally, but it seems lame to use them. As it widens out into a pyramid to match the startup pyramid, all the contents are adhering to the top, leaving a vacuum at the bottom and taxes at the top, but a lot wider at the top, but a better way to explore ideas. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. They have a sofa they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of in glass boxes set in acres of parking lots. If you can't find some way to reach me, how are you going to recognize a good designer? I don't know Java well enough to like it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it were merely lack of the right sort of wrongness, that's a promising sign. The rewards would come later. For most of college I was a philosophy major. There was then a fashionable type of program called an expert system, at the end of month four, our group of friends start with $15,000 from their parents to start a rapidly growing business as software.

The big dogs don't have to pay great hackers anything like what they're worth. In such situations it's helpful to have a low valuation. Productivity varies in any field, but there is a lot of fields. Fixed-size series A rounds. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. Fortunately we've come up with a remotely plausible story, you can at least not repress them. There are millions of small businesses in America, but only a few thousand are startups. So if you're a noob or a control freak for wanting such a thing. Now the group is looking for more investors, if only to get this one to act.1 I'll describe them and you can ask each for advice about the other. But the next time I talked to him, he said they'd decided to build their software on Windows NT, and had a strong Canadian accent and a mullet.

If VCs weren't allowed to get rich by creating wealth, and others to Hot Pockets. And in this context, low-stress job at a big research lab, or tenure at a university. They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the race, most of which now seem to be the same shape, scaled up. 7 uncle 50 4. Like a kid tasting whisky for the first Your Name Here. For example, a politician announcing the cancellation of a government program will not merely say The program is canceled. VCs' legal and financial due diligence is pretty thorough, but the technical due diligence is pretty thorough, but the results were sorted not by the bid but by the bid but by the bid times the average amount a user would buy. What kind of anti-dilution protection do they want? When we were making the rounds of venture capital firms in the 1990s, several told us that software companies didn't win by writing great software, but through brand, and dominating channels, and doing the right deals. If you write the laws very carefully, that is.

The answer is: any company that needs to have good software. But their example rapidly inspired their peers. Now here's the same paragraph rewritten to please instead of offending them: Early union organizers made heroic sacrifices to improve conditions for workers. Though quite successful, it did not. How are we to develop new technology as fast as startups, the ball is in your court to explain how it all works is to follow the case of a hypothetical very fortunate startup as it shifts gears through successive rounds. Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in what they can charge to confiscate whatever you deem to be surplus. Programmers at Yahoo wouldn't have asked that.2 And indeed, there was a kid playing basketball? 5 million from angels without ever accepting vesting, largely because we were so inexperienced that we were appalled at the idea. It was simply a fad. The name is more excusable if one considers it as meaning that we enable people to escape cubicles.3

Really bringing books is insurance. At Viaweb we managed to raise $2.4 Another way to fund a startup is one of the angels is willing to invest. What used to be an increasing number of early failures, the startup should take a smaller amount and use that to get the scale he needed. But I don't think many people realize there is a proportionately large payoff. What kind of anti-dilution protection do they want? Although the finiteness of the number of startups is that they're easy to find. It's pseudo-hip. But as long as they can, for example: after the founders graduated from college in 1986, there were actually support people telling users to restart their browsers, and so on. Deal terms with angels vary a lot. When the Mac first appeared, you didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they already knew.

And once started this process spreads through the whole economy. So, I think in the coming year it will become the norm. It must have seemed a safe move at the time. Why did 36% of Princeton's class of 2007 come from prep schools, when only 1. Ada have lost, while hacker languages C, Perl have won. The ideas start to get users. So why did they call themselves a media company was that they wanted market price for labor. It's that way with most startups too. In many startups' lives there comes a point when you're at the investors' mercy—when you're out of money and the only place to look was in the chain bookstore in our local shopping mall.

So you won't attract good hackers in linear proportion to how good an environment you create for them. Imagine a company with several times the power Google has now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the end of 1997, we released a general purpose shopping search engine called Shopfind. Business owners weren't supposed to be something that helps you work, not something you work despite. But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went off and wrote their own. But don't let them or the situation intimidate you. Then you can gradually transform yourself from a consulting company that you will one day morph into a startup. The distinguishing feature of nasty little ones. That kind of change, from 2 paths to 3, is the technical term.

At Yahoo, user-facing software was controlled by product managers and designers. Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well. It has been so energetically hyped. Decreasing economic inequality means decreasing the risk people are willing to take. Some angel groups charge you money to pitch your idea to them. They were mistaken. If Sun runs into trouble, they could drag Java down with them. It would be insane to go to this extreme.

Notes

Fortunately policies are software; Apple can change them instantly if they plan to, but when companies reach a given audience by a central authority according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the 3 month old Microsoft presented at a time, is not to feel tired. It's a lot of investors. If you like shit. This is not one of the other team.

There may be heading for a future in which YC can help, the underlying cause is usually a stupid move, and partly because so many people work with an excessively large share of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a seed investment of 650k. As he is much smaller commitment than a VC is interested in each type of thing. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a middle ground. This is one problem where rapid prototyping doesn't work.

Many hope he was 10. But I think all of us in the U. In every other respect they're constantly being told they had in grad school, the CIA.

So while we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice. Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce? There is of course some uncertainty about how closely the remarks attributed to them more professional. What happens in practice that doesn't mean the Bay Area, Boston, and are often surprised by how you wish they weren't, as I explain later.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Erann Gat, Nancy Cook, and Brian Burton for reading a previous draft.

[militant-holy-knight]

While the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) has lost control of its statelet in Iraq and Syria, the war against the remnants of the organization is not over, despite President Trump's claim to the contrary. Anti-Assad rebels still control various parts of Syria with non-ISIS jihadis controlling Idlib in the northwest and the Kurds commanding the northeast. Fighting over these enclaves will likely occupy the immediate future. In addition, any "deescalation" agreements remain subject to collapse or cancellation at the convenience of Assad and his backers. But the longer-term question is what happens next? Will the wars in Syria and Iraq finally end, or will there be another round of insurgencies? And will ISIS again go underground to rebuild as it has before?

The Situation on the Ground

While ISIS and other groups have made preparations for going underground to resume an insurgency, the success of such efforts depends on at least two factors: how well the Syrian and Iraqi governments reestablish effective governance and security and are able to identify and root out the rebel infrastructures; and whether these governments can manage reconstruction and reconciliation, especially reintegration of Sunni Arabs.

Governance and security. Reestablishing effective governance and security requires that national governments enforce and maintain effective control over areas previously held by ISIS or other insurgents. If the governments succeed, it will be much harder for opposition groups to go underground and remain functional.

But restoring security will be extraordinarily difficult. For a start, the anti-ISIS war is not over. Though their command structure has largely been shattered, there are still residual ISIS pockets and cells to dig out. Moreover, the parts of ISIS most likely to have survived—senior commanders and the security apparatus—are the parts most able to regenerate the organization. The war against the terrorists has also been only one aspect of the multi-sided civil war in Syria. There are ample opportunities for further wars there and in Iraq. These may be driven by rival nationalisms: Turkey has demonstrated its readiness to go to war against the Kurds in Syria and has occasionally talked about enlarging its borders, and Iraqi Kurds unsuccessfully tried to do so. Factional rivalries and competing ambitions between regional states as well as Israel's sustained efforts to prevent Iran's military entrenchment in Syria could lead to a wider conflagration. Various Sunni states may be prepared to continue support of Sunni factions as a way to distract Iran and other enemies or may look the other way when factions within those states give such support.

It is also possible that the Middle East is in the opening round of multiple civil and proxy wars within Islam: between governments and movements that have weaponized Shiite and Sunni Islam; between Shiite factions allied or opposed to Iran, and among the Sunni jihadists. These wars are likely to be protracted and bloody and will further increase religious polarization and violence within the region and within Islam as a whole, and can potentially destabilize much of the Middle East.

The capabilities of both the Syrian and Iraqi governments are limited; their ability to effectively govern and conduct long-term counterinsurgencies is uncertain. While the collapse of the Iraqi security forces in the face of ISIS has been widely noted, the collapse of the Syrian military was even more comprehensive. The Baghdad government and the Assad regime have only partially recovered, with many of the forces nominally aligned with them in reality being factional militias that serve their own agendas or those of foreign sponsors. This is most prominent in Iraq where the Kurds are effectively an autonomous government and where major parts of the Popular Mobilization Forces militias created in the aftermath of the 2014 Iraqi security collapse are under Iranian control. It is also the case in Syria where its Kurds also desire autonomy and where many militias such as the Lebanese Hezbollah function independently of the Assad regime. Will these forces accept and support government policies with which they (or their patrons) disagree? Or are they more likely to pursue their own agendas, if necessary at the expense of the national governments they nominally support?

Reconstruction and reconciliation. National reconstruction and reconciliation, especially reintegration of the Sunni Arabs, will present uphill struggles. First, there is some question about how much reconstruction the Iraqi and Syrian governments will be able to undertake even with foreign aid. Much of each country has been economically, socially, and physically devastated, both by ISIS rule and by the wars to drive the organization out and their aftermaths.

Large parts of Syria have been devastated by the civil war unrelated to ISIS. There are also millions of refugees, mostly Sunnis, which the Assad regime will likely be reluctant to resettle. Meanwhile, both the Iraqi and especially Syrian governments are effectively bankrupt. Assad's war has been largely bankrolled by Tehran, and his Russian and Iranian patrons are unlikely to be inclined or able to fund the enormous reconstruction costs, estimated to be between $250-300 billion. A preliminary World Bank estimate of Iraqi reconstruction costs from February 2018 was $88 billion. The Trump administration is also unenthusiastic about nation-building, and as of March 2018, had pledged only a $3 billion line of credit. And while the Persian Gulf monarchies have made promises to Iraq, and Riyadh has cautiously opened up to Baghdad to push back against Iranian influence, it remains to be seen whether these governments will actually come up with the money.

Meanwhile, the rest of the international community is likely to experience donor fatigue. Beyond this, is the question of how much of the available money will get to the Sunnis who have been hardest hit: As of early 2019, the Iraqi government had provided virtually no reconstruction money to Ninevah province, which includes Mosul). To whatever degree Syrian and Iraqi Sunni Arabs manage—or are allowed—to recover may be in spite of policies of their governments rather than because of them.

As for national reconciliation, while the Damascus and Baghdad regimes may have made some efforts in that direction in the past, the situations do not look promising. The continuing wars against rebels in Syria will likely be hard and protracted. It is all too likely that ultimately the victors (especially the Assad regime) will pursue a vindictive peace in an atmosphere of religious polarization and widespread individual and group hatred and revenge. Even now, the Assad regime has been confiscating and selling the properties of refugees and those considered rebels.

It is unclear how much the Assad regime will even try to reconcile its Sunni subjects. The Syrian president has made clear his intent to reconquer militarily all of the country, and one must expect the same brutal tactics he has used so far. Assad prefers brutality since his aim is not only to win the war but to intimidate the survivors. The idea that one cannot kill one's way out of an insurgency is a Western conceit that others, especially the Russians and Middle Easterners, dismiss with contempt—after all, that is precisely what Bashar Assad's father did to put down a rebellion in the early 1980s.

In Iraq, the previous government of Prime Minister Haidar Abadi made efforts to reconcile the Sunni Arab minority and protect it from blood revenge and collective tribal responsibility for the actions of individual members. Current prime minister Adil Abd al-Mahdi appears to favor a moderate policy, but how much he can actually deliver remains to be seen. He has no independent power base, controls his own government only partially, and has limited or no control over many of the Shiite militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces, who are frequently supported or controlled by Tehran and have driven a sectarian agenda. Meanwhile, it is reasonable to expect that the popular sentiment of much or most of the Shiite and Kurdish populations, not to mention the surviving non-Muslim religious minorities, favor punishing the Iraqi Sunni Arabs for being pro-ISIS or insufficiently anti-ISIS. Villages and tribes often take their own retribution whether it is government policy or not.

Clearly, there are ample grounds for pessimism.

The Future of ISIS

But the situation does not necessarily favor ISIS as the requirements needed to function underground may work against it. While there remains an atmosphere of massive Sunni grievance and a power vacuum that ISIS could theoretically exploit, how well it will be able to do so is still a question.

For a start, since foreign fighters have been killed, captured, or have fled and not been replaced, ISIS has reverted to being more and more Syrian and (especially) Iraqi. Foreign fighters provided much of the core strength of ISIS and replacing them will be difficult. But even if they stayed, these foreign fighters would be ill-suited for underground resistance in their host countries. Thousands of them came from outside the Arab world, in particular the West, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and areas of the former Soviet Union, and are likely to speak Arabic poorly and to appear non-Arab. These foreigners, as well as Arabs with non-Syrian or non-Iraqi Arabic accents, or for that matter anyone non-local, are likely to get close attention from the security authorities, hindering them going underground.

Various world, national, regional, and local security forces will also be trying to identify, locate, and eliminate ISIS holdouts gone underground. In the Mosul campaign alone, the Iraqi authorities had more than 30,000 suspects' names in December 2016, and by January 2018, had some 6,000 captured ISIS suspects awaiting execution. In addition, some factions may not be waiting on legal niceties. Local and regional services, in particular the Assad regime's, can be expected to err on the side of excess.

ISIS also made many other enemies who will be out for revenge. Syria's conflict, in particular, has been a multi-sided civil war with ISIS fighting many other anti-Assad factions, including nationalists and various other jihadists. The situation has also been complex in Iraq. Even if ISIS did have some local support that was not coerced or opportunistic, it ruled as conqueror even at the expense of local allies. Indeed, its first purge after taking over Mosul was of former allies. In particular, ISIS and al-Qaeda factions in Syria have spent extensive time and effort killing each other, and there are irreconcilable major differences between ISIS and al-Qaeda Central, particularly over leadership of the global jihadist movement. These conflicts can be expected to continue underground.

Finally, popular resentment of ISIS's brutal tactics has produced numerous personal grudges to be settled. An obvious way to settle scores will be to turn in ISIS fighters to the security forces. Financial rewards would be a further incentive. And if government screening seems too lenient, or corrupt, individuals personally may target ISIS members for revenge killings. 

ISIS is thus unlikely to have the same favorable atmosphere to maintain or rebuild its underground structure as previously, especially in Mosul, where its predecessor organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq, was never really removed even when the U.S. military was present in force, and in Syria, where the Assad regime had tolerated, if not supported, their operations against the coalition in Iraq. ISIS may retain a degree of control in some pockets, but many of its survivors are likely to give priority to their own survival, not continuing the war. They may also turn to crime.

Another complicating factor for ISIS will be losing its claim of the right to rule. Aside from the loss of legitimacy due to losing a war and bringing vast devastation to the people on whose behalf the war was supposedly fought, as ISIS tries to return to the underground its narrative will have been discredited. It will only be able to spin defeat for so long. It is much more difficult to argue from failure than from success, and the physical and psychological attractions of the "caliphate" will no longer exist. ISIS will be unable to offer the thrill of being a warrior for God and a licensed outlaw, or promise the availability of sex slaves for unmarried young men, or the expectation of living in a truly Islamic utopia.

Much of the support ISIS received, especially foreign, was due to its claim to be a genuine state in control of territory and its apparent success in routing its enemies. Previously, ISIS could claim to be living up to its motto of "Remaining and Expanding." The self-named "caliph" Abu Bakr Baghdadi claimed his exalted position by right of conquest. Since these successes were considered manifestations of God's favor, what will happen now that those are gone? At what point will it become impossible to ignore that God is no longer intervening on their behalf or that the state Baghdadi claimed to rule is no longer on the map? Assuming Baghdadi has not fled, it will be difficult for him to claim to be ruler of much of anything. He is unlikely to find sanctuary in a neighboring state—such as al-Qaeda Central and the Taliban had in Pakistan and Iran after 9/11 and the previous iteration of the Islamic State had in Syria. However, Turkey remains a remote possibility as the Erdoğan government has been suspiciously lenient toward ISIS and may hope to use ex-ISIS fighters against the Kurds. If Baghdadi is shown to be killed, it will automatically dissolve all oaths of allegiance made to him, which will both dissolve the organization and leave the survivors up for grabs.

The Other Insurgents

While ISIS may find it difficult to recover, these difficulties may not apply to other insurgent groups, in particular Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm (HTS) in Syria and whatever Sunni nationalist groups have managed to survive in Iraq.

Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm. At one time known as al-Qaeda in Syria, Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm split off from ISIS (and also from al-Qaeda) and is, aside from the ambiguous case of the Syrian Kurds, probably the largest of the remaining non-ISIS, anti-Assad factions. Significantly, it appears to have learned from past mistakes and gradually modified its strategy and tactics from those previously standard to al-Qaeda. It may even have made these changes in spite of the policy of al-Qaeda Central, as did other al-Qaeda affiliates and branches, especially in Yemen and Mali. Among its major adaptations,

It has sought to collaborate and build alliances with existing Islamist (or even non-Islamic) rebel groups and to a degree reflects their concerns. It has thus selectively prioritized local rather than international operations, which means it can potentially tap into significantly larger reservoirs of support than ISIS, such as other jihadists that ISIS has alienated. It can also exploit latent support for jihadism and appeal to the substantial portion of Islamic opinion that is functionally radical by claiming to wage a defensive jihad rather than an offensive one.

Instead of trying to impose its version of Shari'a immediately, it has sought to do so gradually, pursuing what might be called jihadization from below, intending to cultivate a base of support and ultimately build a mass movement.

It has been more selective, or at least less indiscriminate, in targeting of terrorist attacks. In 2013, Aymann Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda Central, instructed al-Qaeda to avoid mass casualty attacks, especially those that kill Muslim civilians.

To deal with the collapse of governments, it has tried to set up a governing structure and enforce order. In Syria, it has assumed control of courts and law enforcement, leaving other administration to other groups.

For these reasons, and especially in comparison to ISIS, Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm has come to be considered a "moderate" extremist group, the only one that could plausibly provide other factions with protection from ISIS. These changes have the potential to make it appear less foreign, gain some local support, and at least significantly reduce the reasons for al-Qaeda's past loss of popular support. In particular, a degree of local support may enable Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm to maintain an underground organizational structure in Syria even if its current enclave in Idlib is overrun.

Iraq's Sunni Arab nationalist groups. The situation is different in Iraq. There the al-Qaeda brand has likely been profoundly damaged by ISIS as the direct descendent of al-Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State in Iraq and the murderously bloodthirsty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; al-Qaeda cannot claim any separation between itself and ISIS. Further, in Iraq, ISIS has pretty much monopolized the jihadists. However, this handicap does not necessarily apply to other insurgents, especially Sunni Arab nationalist groups. Prior to ISIS, the most significant of these was the Jaysh Rijal at-Tariqa an-Naqshbandia (JRTN, Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order /Naqshbandi Army). This is a nominally non-sectarian (though it claims some roots in Sunni-Sufi Islam) and neo-Baathist organization formed by Izzat ad-Duri, one of Saddam Hussein's top chieftains, after the Iraqi dictator was executed. Largely composed of Saddam-era military officers and officials, it aims to restore the Baathist system. In late 2014, it was considered the second most powerful Sunni insurgent force in Iraq after ISIS, with at least some degree of popular support. In the past JRTN has operated with and hired other groups, using them as a force multiplier. Initially it cooperated with ISIS (which designated a former Baathist general from the JRTN as the first governor of Mosul when it took over), but in 2016, it claimed to be attacking ISIS when coalition forces began the recapture of Mosul. However, at present, no additional information is available on the JRTN, its ties with other groups, with other Sunni nationalist groups, its present situation, or whether the group survived ISIS.

Conclusions

While ISIS may intend to resume its underground existence in Syria and Iraq, this may turn out to be much more difficult than expected. Although at first glance, the postwar environment may appear fertile for the terror group to pursue such a strategy, there are other factors that may make it difficult for ISIS fighters, especially foreigners, to go underground—in particular, widespread factional and popular hostility to ISIS and the loss of theological/ideological and functional legitimacy due to defeat.

But while ISIS may be less of a threat than commonly supposed, this does not mean it will not be a threat at all. ISIS survived and recovered from a previous massive defeat in Iraq because its enemies did not finish the job of eradicating it—a situation with ominous parallels to the present. Even more important, ISIS is not the only force of insurgents in the field, especially in Syria.

Hayat Tahrir ash-Sha'm, ambiguously an al-Qaeda offshoot, has modified its strategy and has pursued a long-game of sinking roots into Syrian society while pursuing jihadization from the ground up. Over time, the group is likely to absorb surviving jihadists from other organizations, possibly including ISIS survivors. Since there is no reason to believe that Assad will modify his murderous method of rule, one should expect at least one or more low-level insurgencies in Syria.

The present situation in Iraq is somewhat less acute, and the country has better prospects for recovery and reconciliation than Syria. But this depends on the Iraqi government effectively carrying out reconstruction and reconciliation policies. If this does not happen, it is reasonable to expect at least a continuing low-level insurgency, either by ISIS remnants or, more likely, by Sunni Arab nationalists.

There is not a great deal Washington can do to influence events in either country. If recent Middle Eastern history teaches anything, it is that one should never underestimate local players' ability to make bad situations even worse.

[momo-de-avis]

Hi! Just wondering about your opinion that if the Catholic Church sold its art&treasures it would no longer be there for the world to enjoy and would fall into private hands&be hoarded away (many saying the church should sell rn) I've often sat in cathedrals like Notre Dame and marveled at what palaces were built for the masses to enjoy. Like a little luxury for all of us, even the least of us. I know you are an art historian and wondered what you thought of this. : ) hope you are well : )

Thank you anon! I hope you are well too!!

To be frank, this is actually a legal question. And as such, it varies from country to country. 

The Notre Dame, for example, is not owned by the Catholic church. I think France has very similar laws in this respect to my country, and what that means is: the monument, itself, is a National Treasure or National Monument (I don’t know the correct definition, but what it means is: it’s a building highly classified, of not just historical interest to the country, but in heritage as well, and as such is prioritized above others).

In my country, for example, if I am not mistaken, churches that are not classified as National Monuments do not belong to the church entirely (they are allowed financial compensation from the Vatican, which should be employed in restoration, but then priests… you know), but if they aren’t, then the State has to stay away from it. This is because our Constitution states the separation of Church and State, and it’s a double-edged sword: if you wonder why stuff like the infamous restoration of that Jesus painting by Dona Cecilia happened, it’s because the church it’s the sole holder of the building and every artefact inside of it. Stuff like that actually happened several times over in our country: because there is no legal classification of the building, nor the artefacts inside of it—thus no legal protection from the State—priests do what the fuck they want and hire retired 80-year-old painters to slap some plastic paint on an 18th century mural (I wish I was kidding but this shit actually happened).

Again, I don’t know how it goes in other countries, but in Portugal, since the law defines ‘culture’ as something that belongs to everyone, everyone is allowed—and motivated to—act if they see a certain building decaying or believe it to be in danger. This is actually something a lot of people don’t know, and instead take it to facebook, but as a citizen, you can walk into your local city hall and present a form of petition (I sincerely forgot what paperwork this involves) requestion for the monument in question to be classified as ‘in danger’. As soon as that classification happens, the withholder of the monument will be inquired, and if anything happens to it, the owner will be fined.

So, what I mean to say is: the actual Catholic church actually doesn’t own lot of the churches out there classified as Monuments. One thing that also helps to preserve these monuments and to maintain them as public property—actually, now that I think of it, I think it completely forbids governments from selling a monument to a private owner—is if they are classified by Unesco. If it’s got a Unesco stamp of approval, it’s public and cannot be private, I believe (though correct me if I am wrong).

When it comes to privately owning art, however… I am for the opinion that art belongs to everyone, and though you are entitled to own art privately, you have to keep in mind that it is not yours, but everyone’s, and thus SHOULD allow for the art you possess to be viewed by the public. I don’t mean display it in a museum, but work towards images and information of the artwork you own to be made public and accessible to everyone. I say this because portuguese art history is a nightmare. You have an insane amount of incredible artists from the 19th century, and the vast majority of their works, you can’t even find an image. 

See, I teach art history, and it’s absolute hell for me. I remember telling my students, super frustrated, that I couldn’t find a single picture of more than 2 or 3 paintings by Aurélia de Sousa. And what is more frustrating is that, the more you progress through history, the less resources you find. Portuguese Neo-Realism is inexistent. If you google it, this is what you get:

The most important painting, the one that set the movement, isn’t even on the first few pages. Now would you believe if I told you we actually have an entire museum dedicated to neo-realism? Would you believe if I told you it was one of the most important artistic movements in the end of second world war, and an incredible voice against fascism at a time? Probably not, because we don’t really have anything out there to be seen.

This happens because, since our market is tiny and absolute shit, most things that exist are privately owned—usually, heirs of the painters or people who bought it in auctions for pennies—in other words, people you have to wait to die out to actually see the paintings. And there’s something incredibly cruel there. I teach this shit and I have nothing to teach, no tools to teach my students, because these private owners of art refuse to share—and I mean refuse. Aurélia de Sousa, for example, was a passionate photographer, which is something people don’t know. Why? Because the man who owns her photos, for years, refused to let anyone even touch them. This raises another issue as well: if you refuse to let anyone get close, then you suck because art needs to be preserved. 19th century photos in particular wither away. With everything, happens.

With that in mind, there’s also the issue of how these privately owned artworks are preserved. Paintings, if you don’t know, cannot be exposed to natural light, especially sunlight—particularly older paintings. Photos and film have to be preserved at a particularly cold temperature. Wood has to be constantly polished, but because of how old it is, it requires the right technique and materials. Same with silver, gold, etc. Of course, a museum, a cathedral, or what have you, they all have teams at ready for that sort of conservation—but when a private owner acquires a piece of art that isn’t legally classified in any way, they can very well be responsible for its distruction.

We’ve had two very important works burn because of that. First, this painting by Vieira Portuense, who is the only other name we have to have defined neo-classicism (it was short-lived here, we were to busy having a civil war or fending off the french). It’s an emblematic painting for its time, because it’s an embryonic moment of transition between neo-classicism and romanticism. But it’s gone, because the house it was in burned down. Another one I don’t remember the name, but it was Josefa d’Óbidos—the first female painter to have her own workshop here in Portugal. Again, a flood caused a short-circuit which caused for the house to burn down, and the painting was lost.

If a painting (and I think other artefacts as well) is classified in some way (National Treasure, National Interest and uhhhh…. there’s a third one I forgot D:), the owner IS forced to keep it preserved. He is forced to clean it and restore it. If he damages in any way, he is fined and the painting can be confiscated from him. Same for buildings that are classified as anything below National Monument. But if it happens to be a work of art that isn’t classified in any way, legally speaking… Well, if it disappears, it’s gone, and the owner just loses a painting. 

So it’s an incredibly delicate issue. On the one hand, privately owning art is necessary for artists, and I speak of both galleries and auction houses. It keeps the flow of the art economy going (though the art world is RIDICULOUS INFLATED economically speaking, but that’s a whole other conversation) and the market value of artists that are alive and, well, need to eat, is raised every time they sell something. Also, a country’s art market increases if they manage to sell more of their art alongside international artists (why Portugal fucking sucks in that respect), so that in itself is of great interest to artists who are alive and practicing, as well as for the country itself.

But on the other hand, it’s really a double-edged sword. Because I still maintain that art belongs to everyone, and no matter how many artworks you own, you have to keep that in mind. I had the chance to work for art collector who was very conscious about this: he lent his art constantly without charging anything and he kept his every artwork so well preserved he actually had restore works after lending them to museums. Now if everyone had that conscience, the world would be a better place.

So I put it this way to sort of generalize it, because I don’t believe, for one second, the church is exempt from this in any way. In Europe, they detain a great part of many country’s heritage. In our own country, they hold like half of our shit. But again: double-edged sword. 

You said something that is very accurate: churches like the Notre Dame were built for the masses. They were built for everyone, because it is the House of God where everyone is accepted and welcomed. Yes, it initially had a purpose, bore a function that doesn’t serve entirely anymore (though mass is still held in it, the fact that it is today a touristic attraction has shifted the church’s initial purpose, so to speak). So to think that the Catholic Church would close it down, or simply decide that suddenly they couldn’t allow people inside because they own it goes against not just (in our case) the legal definition of cultural object, it goes against the very principle of catholicism—something they turn around easily by opening its doors free of charge during mass. There is a huge debate in my country every like, two summers, because some cathedrals you have to pay to get inside—and something about that isn’t right. If you have to pay to enter, that means the building in itself is important enough that it’s classified as something, at the very least National Monument, but by charging money to get inside, you’re already breaking the very definition of cultural object, legally speaking: everyone is allowed to experience culture. This is a serious debate that happens every so often, and reason why it’s moved certain parties to try and end this shit of pay-to-enter churches, which is maddening to me (supposedly, they say, it’s to tame touristic masses a bit, but we all know that ain’t it).

What’s graver, as I said, is the case of small parishes that happen to own ancient artefacts like statues from the 18th century. Because priests aren’t educated on the matter, they think, oh this is a pretty little nativity scene! And hire some old dude to paint over a fresco. The example I mentioned above, where this happened?

This is what it looked like before:

this is after:

Yeah. I mean, I laugh every time cause it is fucking funny, but you gotta do it not to cry lmao

So like, for me, if we are going to entrust the Catholic church with artefacts and monuments—not necessarily sell them, you can legally lend them, like a legal guardian sort of agreement (I’m sorry, there’s a correct legal term for this but I don’t know it, the shit about law is that you have to address things with the right word)—you gotta force these fuckers to respect what they own. Force them to have restorations made, to clean their shit, to maintain their possessions. Force them to make an effort into bringing awareness to the existence of these things. For the love of God, FORCE THESE PEOPLE TO MAKE AN INVENTORY. Bitch, HIRE ME, I’LL DO YOUR INVENTORY FOR YOU.

And bring these artworks into the world. Create a website. Make pictures of these artworks publically available, free of charge, so that people can look at it, study and it and have free access to it. Have you ever walked into a museum and got told you aren’t allowed to photograph the works inside? I’ll tell you that’s bogus. Sure, flash damages the work, but no flash causes no harm. When a museum does that, I can guarantee you it’s one of two things: one, the artwork you are forbidden from photographing is privately owned by some Elongated Muskrat who thinks they’re above everyone else because LoOk aT mE I oWn ArT, and two: the museum is telling you to buy a catalogue.

What museums usually tend to not understand is that the free circulation of images of their artworks is actually what brings MORE people to their museum. Like, this is a fucking proven fact—that’s why they sell postcards, prints and tote bags with their paintings on it. Case in point? London: you think they give a shit if you take up-close photos of their paintings in Tate Britain? I know they don’t cause I was the idiot photographing paint drips on a goddamn William Holman Hunt. And you don’t even pay to get inside. But do you remember what artworks are inside the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid—aside from the Guernica? Yeah, which one has a strict policy in not photographing their paintings, you ask? Well.

So, tl;dr: if you’re gonna own art, make it available to the public, whether by putting it in a museum or making information about it—including pictures—accessible to all, and the government should be all over your ass annually to make sure you’re not damaging the artworks, otherwise lose custody of the baby and pay a fine. If you’re not gonna abide by these principles, then I am of the opinion that you don’t truly know the real worth of what you’re in possession of, and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to have it. AND THAT MEANS YOU TOO, VATICAN. Fuck your parishes, hire me. There’s a bunch of qualified people to do the job for you, you guys are just lazy and are keeping the Vatican’s money in your pockets.

[turtleduckie]

Omg I’ve just begun reading your queen Rhaenys au and I love it!! Your depictions of the trio are beautiful and I’m always happy in any universe where Elia and her children are alive and well. Thank you so much ❤️❤️ I have to ask since I couldn’t help but notice a teaser on Rhaenys’ lasting legacy. Any hints what it will be?

You're very much welcome! And thank you as well for your kind words. I also want a world where Elia, Egg and Rhae are alive and able to take the reins for their lives instead of just being pawns in somebody else's game, thus this AU. And darling I'll give you more than just hints about Rhaenys' legacy.

--

Okay so remember what I said about Rhaenys' disillusionment with the Kingsguard? Well that was just the beginning and will extend to other institutions. When Rhaenys started her rule in earnest, she dealt with each issue judiciously, issues of land, loyalty, peace, trade, etc. But as much as she tried to do what she considered to be right and fair, she's discovering how difficult it is to implement them because of the nobles in the court actively pushing for their own interests as well, nobles that she also need to make nice of to keep some semblance of peace, especially since she had just come into power and there are many out there who seek to overthrow her. But even when making nice with the nobles, she doesn't let herself be swayed by them at every turn and slowly but surely, she establishes a firmness in her rule. There are moments when ruthlessness is necessary but she tempers it with well-placed concessions that are really just part of a larger gameplan. And yet despite all these progresses, Rhaenys couldn't help but notice that somehow it would seem like she's just making the motions at times and wondering what is it really is she affecting here?

She thinks about her motivations in taking the Iron Throne, the first and foremost of which is survival, survival of her and her family. But now that she more or less have a grasp of the realm, she also wants to rule well and wisely. And her other motivation, one that she can admit only to herself, is to be proven worthy of the throne, to be known as a great Targaryen ruler. (Much of this latter motivation is a result of her desire to distance herself from Aerys II and Rhaegar and also to make up for the fact that she doesn't look like a Targaryen.)

She's now clear on her motivations but it doesn't stop her from realizing and understanding that ruling a realm isn't all that it's made out to be. Her and Egg's lessons on kingship and rule didn't come close enough to encompass the exhausting, infuriating and at times maddening aspects of keeping the peace and stability of the seven kingdoms. Still, she bears it and does her best in being the just and wise ruler she promised herself to be. The coups and rebellions and then the actual act of ruling also provide enough distraction for her to not think too deeply what all this thoughts and feelings about leadership could lead to.

During one of her royal progresses, Rhaenys' entourage was ambushed by an overwhelming number of highly-trained mercenaries. The Queensguard was able to repulse the attack but barely and it resulted in numerous casualties in both sides. And in the chaos, they lost the Queen. The remaining royal forces looked for their Queen for days but their efforts ended in vain. Egg assumes control of the realm in her absence. He orders numerous search parties but the rebels who seek to exploit the Queen's absence hamper progress. With his hands full dealing with the crises the Queen's absence produced and being unable to leave King's Landing himself, a frantic and desperate Egg turns to Jon. (They have formed a bond of sorts during his and Rhaenys' visit to the North.) He voids his mother's decree forbidding Jon (and Lyanna) from leaving North so that he can search for their sister. Lyanna accompanies her son in this mission and they scour the countryside and the surrounding areas where the ambush took place.

So where is Rhaenys? She had been separated from her guard by some very tenacious mercenaries whom she managed to subdue but on great injury to herself. She falls off a cliff, got washed away by the river and when she came to she found herself alone in unknown territory. Until she finds out the loyalties of the people who may be living here she deems it best to hide her identity for now. So she takes off her royal armor and hides it carefully. She makes her way through the forest before passes out once again from her injuries. She wakes up in the hut of some poor farmers who found her on their way to the fields. They didn't recognize her because of her bloodied and dirtied attire and the fact that this village had been far out and had never been graced by the queen or any of the rulers before her. When they asked her who she was, Rhaenys tells them that she was part of a caravan of traders who have been attacked by bandits and only she managed to get away. Her rescuers accepted her story since bandits were regular in the area. They took care of her as she recovered from her wounds. Eventually she tried asking them questions about the queen to determine their loyalty.

"The lords an' ladies, kings an' queens, they play their game of thrones," the old woman spat out, "while us smallfolk suffer for it. It don't matter who sits on that gods-be-damned throne; 'tis all the same for us. Death an' misery."

As it turned out, their village had been a victim of the raids made by forces rebelling against the Crown. And to Rhaenys' dismay, the royal forces had also sacked the village at some point to flush out the rebels hiding out in the area.

Lyanna and Jon eventually find her. When Rhaenys sees them and how worried they were about her, it does much to change her feelings toward them and she hugs the both, much to the mother and son's surprise. When Rhaenys' saviors realized who she was their expressions turned cold and they shut themselves in, cutting off her words of gratitude.

When she returns to King's Landing, the realm is once again in chaos with some attempting to install Egg on the throne permanently though Egg adamantly refuses. A huge battle ensues in which the dissenters have joined together to try to overthrow Rhaenys for good and it is through the Trio's combined leadership that they vanquished the rebellious forces. Rhaenys executes the major proponents of the rebellion, and imprisons others who refused to swear fealty to her. Those who did, she pardons but confiscates their lands.

This victory boosted the morale of the people loyal to the Crown and this helped in quashing out further dissent all over the country. This then leads to Rhaenys' second coronation in which both Egg and Jon crown her with Aegon the Conqueror's crown, thus signifying that she is the undeniable true and rightful ruler of the seven kingdom.

And yet, the old woman's words rattled in Rhaenys' mind for a long time afterwards.) She had visited them to give them gold and other tokens of her gratitude which they accepted stiffly.) After the high of her victory and second coronation, she tries to be more conscientious and make more efforts in bettering the lives of the smallfolk. But she realizes that it just wasn't feasible in the current system. Any concessions she made for the smallfolk in terms of taxes or free services put a strain on the Crown's finances. And when she proposed higher taxes on the nobles, it was met with an outcry. She considers the Tyrells' tactics of courting the love of the masses by their shows of charity but dismisses that as it doesn't change the plight of the smallfolk at all. It just distracts them from it. And that's just not good enough anymore.

This makes her start wondering about the current system of governance, and with it her and the Targaryen dynasty's right to rule. Thus far, she had been too preoccupied with maintaining the stability of the realm to consider this but her recent experiences have brought this to the forefront of her mind. Indeed, what gave them the right to hold the Iron Throne and rule over the Seven Kingdoms? Aegon the Conqueror united the six kingdoms so yes, she understands that. But what of those who came after him? What claim did they have other than blood ties? And many of them had brought more harm to the realm than good, with the more recent example being her grandfather (and well, her father though he never ascended to the throne). She recalls Jon Snow's words about the accident of one's birth not dictating the nobility of one's character, or in this case one's ability to rule well and wisely. She herself is trying but she can honestly say that it has little to do with the blood in her veins and more of a conscious decision on her part.

But this internal crisis is put on hold as the Long Night comes upon them and they face a threat bigger than any they have faced so far.

*insert details of the Battle of the Long Night*

The forces of the living come out victorious! Though as in any great war, there are casualties.

The three of them stand on top of the remains of the Wall. Jon catches Rhaenys' haunted eyes and he can see the exhaustion in them. Almost instinctively, he reaches for her and envelops her in an embrace, mirroring the one she gave him and Lyanna when they found her in the village.

"Gods, Jon," Rhaenys whispers almost inaudibly. "I am so tired."

Jon holds her even tighter. "I know. But you need to hold on a little longer. The realm still needs you." Then he adds when Egg joins them in a group hug, "Egg and I will be with you."

After the Long Night, all the seven kingdoms are exhausted and shaken from the near-brush with death and are now at their most malleable for changes. In a way the Long Night managed to unite the realm in a more complete way than Rhaenys could have managed on her own. Fighting alongside the heirs of the noble Houses, soldiers and the smallfolk, Rhaenys has now more than ever the support of most of the seven kingdoms and they are all looking at her for guidance in the restoration.

Rhaenys is at that pivotal moment in history where she could take the realm in any direction she so wished.

This is then her major character conflict, where she has to decide if she continues on the path of restoring the Targaryens' former glory and in effect, reaffirms herself as a true Targaryen, and one of the greatest who ever sat on the Iron Throne--or if she puts an end to this dynastic ruling and give the power to the people in a new system of nonhereditary governance where the leaders are democratically elected, and in the process be forever known as the Targaryen ruler who brought down the dynasty.

The choice isn't easy, especially since Rhaenys has sacrificed so much, has given her life to the Iron Throne and her personal identity has been intertwined with it. All her life she had worked tirelessly to prove herself worthy of the throne, and yet the lessons that she had learned along the way to becoming just that told her that to be a worthy ruler is to give that power away.

Alongside the rebuilding of the seven kingdoms, Rhaenys convenes the heirs of the noble Houses and representatives of the other social classes and after she lays out her plans for changes, most of them pledge their supporting for her endeavor (there's nothing like a near-death experience to make people more open to ideas and form a strong fraternal bond that cuts across classes). 

She then begins the transformation of the institutional framework and the restructuring of society to pave the way for the eventual transition to a republic.

Despite the initial optimism, there soon came resistance from people who clung to the old ways, mostly coming from the noble classes. Some of the dissenters started muttering about Mad Queen Rhaenys. The royalists denounced her and at first called for Aegon VI then Jon Snow then Viserys and then Daenerys to take over and put an end to this madness. They all refused and instead declared their support for the Queen's efforts. The changes have started gaining momentum and the dissenters could do nothing to stop them.

The transition took a long time and encountered bumps along the way, with the many attempts to halt its progress and restore the monarchy. But Rhaenys was steadfast in her goals and the majority of the people were behind her.

When the new republic was born, people urged that she run for office (she would be a shoo-in, they said even if she was already in her twilight years) but she refused. She told them the same thing that she told Egg when he asked her about her plans many many years ago: that she has to step back to give the new government a chance. If she runs, if she takes office, it would seem like the same system as before just wearing a different dress. No, somebody else has to take the mantle. Somebody who was not a Targaryen.

Many years later when this moment became part of history, people writing about it wouldn't be kind to Rhaenys. Royalist historians disparaged her and called her the False Targaryen, the Mad Queen, the Unworthy, etc. especially since the new republic had a turbulent start as it tried to find its footing.

But eventually people realized that had the Targaryen dynasty and monarchic ruling continued, it would have inevitably ended in a bloody revolution. Maybe not in Rhaenys' reign but in the next or the next. Queen Rhaenys' decision to end the dynasty then averted this violent scenario and paved the way for a more peaceful transition to a democratic republic.

This is her lasting legacy.

--

In one of her visits to Dorne after she had announced the plans of the transition, Rhaenys sits with her mother by the Water Gardens. Protests have started cropping up and Rhaenys doubts herself. She can't look at her mother in the eye because she still feels like she is giving away what her mother had fought to keep before Rhaenys came to power.

"I'm sorry," says Rhaenys.

"What for, my love?"

"For giving it all away." She feels her eyes pricking with tears. "I'm sorry I wasn't anything like Aegon the Conqueror or Queen Nymeria. I'm sorry I failed you."

Elia takes her daughter in her arms. "Oh my love," she whispers, running her hand through Rhaenys' hair. "You didn't fail me. On the contrary, you proved me right. Remember what I said the night before your first coronation? Darling, you are nothing like King Aegon I or Queen Nymeria because you have accomplished and are on your way to accomplishing something greater than any of them ever achieved. You are freeing the entire realm from its shackles."

[introvertguide]

Raiders of the Lost Ark; AFI #66

The tenth film the group reviewed from the AFI list is the magnificent adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This movie might be one of the most fun to watch films ever, and critics have agreed with that sentiment for close to 40 years. The film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won 5 of them. Sadly, but deservedly, the movie took all the technical awards, but none of the acting/directing/writing awards. This makes since as Raiders came out the same year as Reds, On Golden Pond, and Chariots of Fire. That is some stiff competition and, since the Academy seems to favor drama over action, Raiders did not have much of a chance. Interesting, though, that Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only Best Picture nominee from that year to be included on the AFI 100. The film also won #10 on AFI’s Greatest Thrills and #2 Greatest Hero. It also swept the Saturn awards as it was an immediate hit with the sci-fi and fantasy adventure crowd. 

The movie is about the story of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). The film begins with Jones in a jungle and finding some ancient ruins with many traps protecting something he is after. His guides are soon shown to be working against him and Jones barely escapes the ruins alive with a golden idol (but not without being chased by a massive rolling boulder). He immediately runs into a rival treasure hunter named Belloq (Paul Freeman) who tries to kill Indy, but Jones escapes in a dramatic sea plane scene. So far, so good.

Jones is shown after his heroic escape to actually to be a professor of archeology at Marshall College, not just a treasure hunter. He is the hunky teacher that all the students crush on, but Professor Jones does not seem to care about these things. He is, however, interested in an offer to go to Cairo to find the Ark of the Covenant before Nazis do. He also wants to send the Ark back to the museum for study instead of using it as a weapon, the thing which Hitler apparently wants it for.

 He starts out by going to Nepal because an old colleague has a medallion that goes on top of a staff that reveals the location of the Ark. Upon arriving at an old bar in Nepal, he finds that his old colleague Abner Ravenwood is dead, but the daughter Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) is there with the headpiece. She and Indy have romantic history of which she seems angry about, but the reunion is immediately interrupted by a very strange Nazi interrogator (Ronald Lacey) who tries to take the headpiece. Indy and Marion are able to fight off the Nazi and his goons and escape, but the Nazi manages to get some information from the headpiece to start looking for the Ark.

Indy and Marion go to Cairo and meet his Egyptian contact Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and gather information about the Nazi dig for the Ark. I really don’t want to spoil the process of looking for the Ark because it is so much fun. There is a lot of fighting off Nazis and Egyptian mercenaries, a lot of tomb raiding, and Jones’ rival Belloq shows up as the leader of the Nazi dig. There is a point where Indy does find the Well of Souls (where the Ark is kept) and it is full of snakes. He is found out by Belloq and the Nazi group and they steal the Ark from Jones. Indy follows the Nazi convoy and is able to steal back the Ark and hires a pirate boat to get him, Marion, and the Ark back to the U.S. Sadly, the boat is found by a Nazi submarine with Belloq aboard and the Ark is confiscated by the Nazis along with Marion. Indiana is able to stow away on the submarine as it goes to a small island to test out the power of the Ark.

Again, I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will say that Indiana Jones is captured and both he and Marion are captives when the Nazis attempt to open the Ark on the island. Let us say that it doesn’t go well. The power of the Ark is not kind to Belloq and the Nazis and it is far and away the most disturbing violence in the movie (I used to cover my eyes when I was a kid). Indiana and Marion survive and bring the Ark back to the states. Unfortunately, the government confiscates the prize and puts it in a giant storage unit where it will assumedly never be found. Cue the music and the end of the movie.

I think that the fun comes from the pace of the movie because I think it is 70% action/drama, 20% puzzle solving, and only about 10% establishing. It is a very stereotypical “guys” movie and the inner 13-year-old boy in me absolutely loves every second of it. Both George Lucas, who wrote the film, and Steven Spielberg, who directed it, wanted to remake the adventure film serials from the 30s and 40s. This was the equivalent of weekly adventures that would have been on TV if the technology existed, but instead were put out in cinemas and were favorites of younger boys. Neither Lucas nor Spielberg are old enough to have been alive for these serials when they came out, but they bonded over their affinity for the style.  

This movie is especially known for the sounds, sets, and cinematography. Some tomb scenes in the movie were filmed on sets in California, but the Cairo scenes were shot in Tunisia, the jungle scenes in Hawaii, and the submarine and docks were shot in France. It is not what one would call “on location” filming, but all the areas are gorgeous and well utilized. I love the John Williams score for the film, as he always does a great job, but I love the sound and sound editing on this film even more. Traditional foley artists used especially loud guns fired in echo chambers to “beef up” the gunshots. The fight sound effects are simply baseball bats hitting leather gloves so the punches sound weighty and devastating. This is very unrealistic but much more satisfying for the audience.

This movie is so much fun, I was able to watch it three times in five days without hesitation. I saw it initially on my laptop with headphones and was blown away by the sound effects (like I am every time). This is definitely a film to enjoy with the guys, so I also watched with my housemates on the big TV and it was a lot of fun. There was no playing with phones during this movie because it just does not stop with the action. FInally, I watched on my room TV to take plot notes, but had the sound down because it was rather late at night. Still a fantastic experience. I think what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t matter what size screen or sound system you have when you watch this movie. It also doesn’t matter if you are alone or in a group when watching the movie. It will be fantastic in about any situation.

As far as a recommendation, it is a resounding yes. Please do. Treat yourself to 90 minutes of awesome fun. I will say that the first and last 10 minutes might be a bit frightening for the very young and the especially sensitive, but it is otherwise pretty tame as far as scares go. The film is not in the same league as something like Citizen Kane or The Godfather, but it is still fantastic and has had as much influence on Americana as either of those movies. In my opinion, Raiders deserves the spot it has on the AFI list and is the perfect example of a fun American action film.